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Satisfying The Need to Dig
Gardening is a hobby that goes and grows with you!
It’s May in the upper Midwest and everyone I know is itching to get their hands in the dirt. I’ve been a gardener for more than half my life. I know what I like to plant and grow, and what I don’t. I know that I prefer flowers over vegetables and plants that grow in the sun more than those that grow in the shade.
At our last house, one that was on a previous prairie — many decades ago and thereafter farmland — we had large perennial beds. We put in these beds over the sixteen years we lived on those 3.25 acres. The yard was largely flat, and the soil was heavy clay in parts and a sandy loam in others. In short, I knew the property.
I knew where to put the wild blue lupine where they’d thrive. My husband and I knew there was a microclimate on the northwest side of the house where we grew thirty fruit trees. I knew that monarchs would love the three varieties of milkweed on which they could deposit their eggs and subsequent larva would eat and grow large enough to shed their skin five times. I knew the nectar plants, such as Liatris, coneflower, black-eyed Susan’s, monarda, and yarrow would feed the…
