I spent quite a bit of time outside on Sunday, picking up sticks and leaves and cleaning up what I loosely call "the flowerbeds." I don't really have flowerbeds; when I plant flowers I just dig holes in the ground and plop them in, I generally don't do anything like condition the soil, or spade it up or add anything to it. I should. I just find that I have too many other things to do to spend a lot of time working in the garden; that's why I have a lot of stuff planted in pots, too.

The yard is full of violets. I don't remember if I planted the first ones or not, of if they came as a bonus with something else that I brought home from my mother's garden. The yard is also covered with "Creeping Charley," a weed that Bob and the guy who put in the sod last summer (that subsequently died for, apparently, lack of sunlight) so carefully saved for me, thinking it was a species of ivy.

Actually, it apparently is a type of ivy; I found quite a few references about it, along with just as many articles with titles similar to Creeping Charlie and How to Kill it.

I don't mind weeds so much, really. I've never been someone who cared about having a perfect, weed-free, expanse of lawn; I'd much rather have a jungly kind of yard, with old-fashioned flowers and herbs and things that I recognize from my childhood. I'd love to have peony bushes and snowball bushes, and I would, if peonies weren't so expensive.

I ordered a catalog from Select Seeds - they sell what they call "antique flowers," and they've got a lot of interesting stuff.