Going Wild

Summer always sneaks up on me.  I always have big plans for pots of tomatoes or flowering beds, but they never come to fruition (no pun intended).  This year, I just barely managed to get a few flowers potted in time.  Next year, I always say.

My big plans for next year are slightly different than in past years.  We have a lovely stretch of wild embankment that borders the property.  The wildflowers and weeds grow unmolested.  But I think it needs more color.

When my petunias ceased flowering, I noticed little black dots on the leaves.  After some searching on the net, I discovered that these were, in fact, seeds. I then set about collecting all the seed pods (once I had found out what they looked like) and have a baggie full of petunia seeds.  I plan on finding some other seeds of flowers that grow without much encouragement, and when spring has warmed the ground enough, I will send The Boy to walk along the trail, sprinkling seeds as he goes.

I should probably just congratulate myself on learning what petunia seeds look like and how to collect them.  As I said, I make big plans and very little ever comes of them. But if I were to actually put my plan into action, imagine the lovely show of color we'd have throughout the summer months!

In reality, I am just at odds with the town's parks department which insists on widening the pedestrian trail by slicing through the wildflowers and weeds until there's just a strip of them left on either side.  There's so little nature left anywhere but why not let it grow undisturbed along a nature trail? The brush and undergrowth are home to rabbits and other small wildlife, birds, butterflies... the list goes on.

So let them come to mow down what they can reach with their machines of destruction.  I will simply increase the plant life on the sloping bank that they cannot reach. Nature must be allowed to grow wild, and if necessary, it should be encouraged to grow wilder.