My wife, Barbara, sometimes known as the assistant gardener though she’s been slipping and spending less time in the garden in recent years, is clearly very different in her vision of what the garden should be. She prefers tidy edges, without leaves of hostas and Ostrich ferns extending to obstruct half the path. She wants a lawn and well trimmed, densely branched shrubs, and despises one tree or shrub growing into another. I am far to the other extreme, and fortunately, I think she’s given up on ever changing my ways.

Typically, we stroll the garden separately, but yesterday she joined me. This was a happy walk, with me filling her in about the latest additions, and “oh yeah, have you seen this”, pointing out brilliant, tiny flowers in the new rock garden (below). All was well, until we reached the back side of the lower, rear garden.

Between granite pavers I’ve planted a big leafed bugleweed (Ajuga reptans ‘Catlin’s Giant’) that is just beginning to encroach upon the paving, and certainly this will soon entail regular pruning or the granite will be lost beneath a carpet of purple. The immediate “oh no” told me I should have veered onto another path, but instead I received the lecture that I’ve heard a time or two. Why, she asked. And of course, I replied “don’t worry”, which was just as effective as her words of admonishment.

In moments, she was back indoors, leaving me to scheme what could be shoehorned into the few remaining gaps not covered by the vigorous bugleweed. With my retirement a few months off I’ve become comfortable with a budget that will continue to allow annual expenditures for plants, but that’s presuming I haven’t filled every cranny beforehand. The last year has been a bit of a binge with handfuls of trees and more plug ins than I can count. I expect the bigger projects are in the past and now I’ll tinker along the edges, but this plan is likely to run afoul on our next stroll.