My Accidental Garden

I picked my first bouquet of flowers from my garden today. It's not much but it's pretty and I'm proud of it. Gardening in Montana is especially difficult but these flowers manage to thrive without much of the backbreaking work that the vegetable garden requires so I'm particularly fond of them.

The sunflower was the first to bloom of the many growing in random spots throughout the garden. They're a result of me throwing the heads from last year into the garden with a shrug of "We'll till 'em in and see what happens". It's not terribly convenient to have them where they are, but they look cool!

Marigolds are one of my favorite flowers. They make me happy because they remind me of my childhood. Just the smell alone triggers memories. My mother always had marigolds growing in her flower beds. In fact, these particular ones came from a pack of seeds she sent me a couple years ago. I planted them and let them go to seed, not expecting much to happen in the spring due to our harsh Montana winters. They came back. Then last year I left them alone again and they came back in full force this year. I'll admit now that I made a mistake. There are literally thousands of marigolds growing in my side garden, around the lettuce, chard and peas that I planted in the same spot, not expecting the marigolds to go so crazy. I'm not exaggerating when I say the area has gotten out of control. Last weekend I finally decided I needed to address the situation because it had gotten so dense, between the veggies, flowers and weeds, that it was almost impossible to see what was what. I decided I would transplant a bunch to my front yard and give some away to friends. Once I have removed about thirty plants and a bunch of weeds, I stepped back and took a look, expecting to see a huge difference but I was disappointed. When my boyfriend came over to look, he could barely tell I had removed any plants at all. In a nice way, he called the marigolds invasive weeds and gave me the cold hard truth: I'm going to have to thin them out and throw them away. I looked at the crowded garden and nodded slowly "There's too many. I understand."I knelt down in the dirt and spent about a half hour pulling more weeds and some flowers. I know they're plants but they're so crowded and overgrown, it made me feel sad and guilty for allowing the situation to get to where it is.

It's been almost a week and I still haven't removed any more plants. I know I need to. I'll do it, I promise. I was just so pleased to see the flowers blooming when I went outside today that I picked them, brought them in and didn't go back out. I just hate the thought of having to discard so many plants that grow here easily when everything else fights so hard to survive. Hopefully the marigolds I transplanted will thrive in their new location and I won't have to face this awful task again!