Self-sowing flowers

The hot-colored blossoms of California poppies are my first harbingers of summer. There is much to recommend these easy plants; I love the ferny foliage, the silken texture of the blossoms, and the long blooming season. Multiple sources write that they make good cut flowers, though I have never had much luck. I can't say I regret that, as the informal, nodding stems seem more at home in a casual garden border than stuffed in a vase.

I first sprinkled the seed in my front bed four years ago, rather naive about the "self-sowing" qualities described on the packet. Good thing I love these plants, for eradication would be a dismal project. The seed heads are bursting with tiny seeds, readily sown by wind and gravity all over my garden and beyond. I have noticed the seedlings popping up in sidewalk cracks halfway down the block. Even in desired locations, the seedlings come up very thickly, and must be thinned aggressively for a nice display. The one year I did not thin them out, thanks to the torpor of late pregnancy, I ended up with a dense mat of underperforming, leggy plants.

Self-sowing plants entice me with their care-free attitude. If one has anxiety about formal "garden design" and or feels self-conscious about plant placement, self-sowers are an easy out; just let the plants make the decisions. And, as Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd point out, the plants tend to pop up just where they belong, though one would have never chosen that site intentionally.

Of course, it is a fine line between self-sowing garden plant and weed. Feverfew is rampant in my garden. I'm unsure if it was purposefully planted by the former owner, or if it is just a weed that has drifted in from surrounding areas. I can't begrudge its presence, however. It grows in the areas -- the dry and the hardscrabble -- that would otherwise be visual wastelands. The seedlings are easy to pull out, but I will leave them where they are. I have never tried it out medicinally, and am content to welcome the daisy-like flowers and pleasant citrusy scent to my "wildflower" bouquets.

This is not to say I am at peace with all self-sowers. I could do with less dill popping up all over my herb garden and, even this early in the season, I am tired of pulling out chives from every corner of my yard. A responsible gardener would deadhead these plants before they scatter their seed all over the place. But in late summer, I am charmed by the seed heads, and prefer to pay the piper later. I must also admit that a few extra dill plants-- with their airy yellow heads -- will look nice among my cosmos. I would have never thought of that.

Dandelions on the table

The annual torrent of curses is now pouring forth from my usually mild-mannered husband as he digs the first crop of dandelions out of our lawn. Weed though they are, I can't say I begrudge their presence. Dandelions bring a bright, cheery punch of yellow to otherwise neglected lots in our neighborhood. My son is having great fun following his father with the "compost wagon" and collecting the yanked plants for our various piles.

Had we been a little earlier in the season, my husband's efforts could have been directed towards the kitchen rather than the compost pile. All of our recent travel made us lag in the lawn foraging and by now, in full flower, the dandelion greens are bitter. The new rosettes are the tastiest, but even they are an acquired taste in the era of the mild tasting plastic-packed "spring mix" available at the supermarket. Last year, I collected enough rosettes to make a filling for Greek hand-pies, basically a fried turnover oozing with a feta, onion and dandelion greens stuffing. Even tricked out with the onions, cheese and fried dough, the greens were a tough sell for my dinner guests. I admit I ate them mostly on principle and with a copious amount of wine to wash them down.

On a more palatable note, I made dandelion wine long ago and am pondering the manufacture of another batch. There is a dilemma, however: the recipe I used came from the king of all foragers, Euell Gibbons, and calls for a large bucket of blossoms. Even without my husband's manual war on weeds, our paltry lot would hardly yield enough blossoms for a quart jar, let alone a bucket. But where should I turn for more? I am pretty skittish about urban foraging in these parts....who knows what pesticides and heavy metals and residues lurk in the vacant lots and fields. I watch my neighbors pour large bottles of chemicals all over their yards courtesy of Home Depot. The wine may be a project stowed away until I have the time to access a more reliably pollutant-free area of land.

So, I have made a note to try to catch the young rosettes in time for eating next year. This time, forget the feta. I'm going with bacon. As most chefs have tiresomely proved in every restaurant I've visited this year, add bacon to anything and people will order it in droves. In her excellent memoir, Little Heathens, Mildred Kalish recalls the bacon-drenched dandelions of her childhood in Depression-era Iowa. Though now eighty years have passed, she still recalls with relish the first Spring days with new dandelion greens on the table, braised in a hearty amount of bacon fat. They surely tasted ambrosial to her hungry six year-old body after months of canned- and dried-food drudgery. Be you gardener or cook, if you have yet to read this book, I suggest you immediately place it on the reading list. It is full of such gentle wisdom and kind judgement that one leaves the pages almost jealous of the deprivation Kalish suffered, dandelions and all.

Invasive plants

My main winter project, the cold frame, is finally built and waiting for a layer of paint. With the Winter Olympics on full-blast, I have stayed away from my cold workshop in the basement in favor of a cozy spot on the couch and good view of the speed skating relay semifinals. The paint can wait for another day, or at least until I have finished analyzing all the men's figure skating costumes. The amount of actual athletic content in the programming is slim compared to the commercials, emotional back story segments and commentary, and it would take a more patient viewer than I to sit uninterrupted in front of the TV for this many hours each night. Fortunately, my laptop comes in handy while enduring yet another credit card commercial and I have frittered away the time between half-pipe runs surfing the gardening Internet universe.

I stayed away from the seed selling websites for a few nights, but eventually I could no longer resist -- I wanted more information on what I already have and even started noting seeds that I will plant in a few seasons, when I -ahem - have more space. Visiting any garden retailer, be they virtual or brick-and-mortar, is, of course, a dangerous business for a woman with limited real estate and too many seeds as it is. Over on Garden Rant, Amy Stewart posted on the agony of a tempting nursery catalog despite a garden already bursting at the seams. I feel her pain. Though there are many seed sellers who I love to click on, Summer Hill Seeds is by far my favorite -- the owner (Illinois-based by the way!) favors the rare and unusual. Tidbits of interesting trivia are scattered throughout the plant descriptions, like this one, for Prickly Caterpillars, scorpiurus muricatus:

"In days past, caterpillars were added to salads to surprise unexpected diners, but not meant to be eaten mostly because they are so hairy."

I had to have them, and I am already deciding which honored guests will get this this unexpected salad surprise. Oh Summer Hill, you always manage to open my wallet.

But then -- oh, the horror! -- I stopped dead in my web surfing tracks when I saw climbing nightshade seeds on my beloved website. What? My new favorite seller is actually asking folks to pay money for these seeds? The description tells the unwitting gardener that this is a "desirable" vine with "loose clusters of beautiful star-shaped blooms". Not only is this plant potentially toxic to young children, who inevitably will be drawn to the bright red berries, but in my experience it spreads with unmatched aggression here in Chicago. Apparently, it is invasive all over North America, if one is to believe the hate mail posted in Dave's Garden forums. It is difficult to uproot and smells bad when ripped out. No matter how hard I try to eradicate the vine, my permissive neighbor always ensures that more seeds will spread my way. I have never photographed my own backyard specimens of this weed in full bloom. As I am not a poster of others' photos, the image above is all I can offer. I pulled this corpse of a climbing nightshade vine out of my neighbor's chain link fence this morning.

I know that one woman's weed can be another woman's undiscovered European heirloom, but really it is just too much to bear for me to think of my garden nemesis being intentionally planted by other gardeners. Based on the message boards, I know several folks to the south would feel the same shock and disgust that I am growing maypops, Passiflora incarnata. At least maypops are native -- and the flowers look far superior to the nightshade's. Here in Chicago, the most visibly vilified invasive plant species is buckthorn -- there is a movement afoot to get rid of it. At a Garfield Park Conservatory event, they even had crafts for kids featuring buckthorn that had been ripped out of North Park Nature Village. Yet, for those not in the local area, the king of all invasive species here in Chicago is fauna not flora. Yes, I am talking about the Asian carp. It even has its own "kill zone". I'd like to start a Climbing Nightshade kill zone, with my back yard being ground zero. As I won't resort to herbicides, its me and my garden gloves against this marauder. Come to think of it, my son might be strong enough to help me rip it out this year...as long as he doesn't snack on the berries.

Eyesores in the neighbor's yard

We live in a tightly-packed working class neighborhood on the Northwest side of Chicago. The narrow city lots mean we really rub elbows with our neighbors - we can literally reach out and touch our neighbor's house from our kitchen window. I don't kid myself that we live in an aesthetically pleasing environment: this is a tough, urban neighborhood. Lots of fences, more cement than green space, houses in various states of upkeep and the perpetual "city mulch" of newspapers, plastic bottles and other wind-blown trash. But, a girl can fight to make her little piece of this area as productive and attractive as she can. And I have to give it up to my fellow denizens -- even the known gang member houses usually have hanging baskets and some bulbs in the front yard.

Our neighbors to the north are a young family with three kids, who use their outdoor space and garden regularly. They are of the single-plant-surrounded-by-two-square-feet-of-dyed-mulch school of gardening, but I can't begrudge their enthusiasm. Their children are also willing to eat anything I hand them through the cast iron fence that separates our two yards, be it strawberries or raw asparagus.

The neighbors to the south give me reason for garden grievance. They are a polite, elderly couple who keep to themselves. They give a wave and a "God bless you" whenever they see us, but generally stay inside. In the height of summer, the husband will putter around the yard, and he grows one or two tomato plants. Otherwise he lets weeds grow rampant in the yard, organizing them into a semblance of border beds around his yard. Now, I don't mind asiatic dayflowers, but I am tired of ripping out yards of invasive bittersweet nightshade. No matter how much I get out, more always comes through on his side. I have gently offered to help him remove the plants from his side, acknowledging the difficulty of an 80-plus year old person wrestling with the aggressive weed. He demurred: he likes the purple flowers and red berries. He likes nightshade apparently more than trees, since he also cut down a mature flowering tree in his yard and now has a sad, rotting stump near the garage.

Okay. So live and let live. This policy of course didn't stop him from coming into our yard uninvited two seasons ago and mowing down our asparagus bed because "rats might live in there". Grrr. The compost bins bother him for this reason, too. Never mind that I have assured him repeatedly that I only use rodent-proof designs approved for urban use.

Yet this is my major rant about my southern neighbors: the abundance of plastic in the yard. They have plastic poinsettias, lilies and daffodils plunged into the various garden beds to mimic real growth. All seem to have been rescued from artificial funeral wreaths and dollar-store party centerpieces. They are old and shabby, with many "petals" now shredded, yet they persist in the beds, in "bloom" no matter what the season. Last year, the husband hung several plastic Sesame Street characters on their clothesline pole near our fence. Every time we walk by, a fading, sad Cookie Monster swings in forlorn greeting. Now, I could rant about the gang tags on our garage, the sneakers and plastic bags hanging from power lines over our street, but these plastic Sesame Street characters are the things that really get under my skin. If I had more space, I would rip out the roses that currently climb the fence separating our two yards and plant some thick, evergreen shrubs as a living curtain between me and these mangy toys.

I have heard stories of aggressive dogs and the dumping of untold quantities of chemicals by neighbors, so this is a small beef in the scheme of things. But our neighborhood needs less plastic impostors of plants and more real plants. Why not hang a bird feeder instead of junky figurines? Maybe my son and I will build just such a bird feeder for them. Who can resist a gift when offered by a cherubic bird-loving toddler?

Mid-winter assessment and identifying a weed

The cold is back in Chicago with a vengeance, but over the weekend we had a bit of a January thaw. The snow that had been hanging around since before Christmas melted away, and I went out to assess the garden. I found my fall-divided Sedum "Autumn Joy" already putting forth new growth.

I also took a long, sad look at my Munstead Lavender. I didn't prune it well this past season and the center is all woody. I am not sure if it is worth trying to salvage.

From what I have read, once the center is woody, the best plan is to grow new plants from cuttings. The center isn't as thick and overgrown as some I've seen, but I plan on starting a few new plants this year. I just went to a propagation workshop that recommended stripping a branch, coating it with rooting hormone and layering it in the soil. I may try that, but someone also recently gave me a package of clear rooting gel. I think this will be a good way for my son to track the progress of the new plants and see how roots form.

Along the side of my house, in a slim cement crack, I found a mystery weed still thriving. It popped up this year, and I wish I knew what it was! It has very sweet purple flowers during the fall. I am sure it is a common urban weed, but I rather like it. It brightens up the harsh cemented-over area.

At first I thought it was creeping charlie, but on closer inspection, the leaves aren't the same.

I am continuously frustrated in my attempts to identify weeds in my yard. This website on Illinois weeds should be helpful, but the search function is difficult and the pictures do not reliably load. This site on weedy wildflowers in Illinois has better pictures and information, but no search function. The one weed book at my library is in black and white and focuses on meadow weeds. What's a girl to do? Maybe the Internet will work its magic and someone clicking through this blog will know what this is.

The one thing I am sure of is that this weed will be listed as a plant that loves barren ground and abandoned industrial wastelands. Whenever I positively identify a weed in my yard, it is always listed as a plant that thrives in horrible, infertile areas. This always punctures any pretensions I have about my little urban plot being some oasis of organic fertility. Oh well, the real weed identification won't begin for a while yet. More snow has fallen, and it feels like January again.

1/28/10 Update....I found the answer to the mystery weed! See comment below!