Cait's Garden

I have stopped gardening for a little while. I trimmed down the winter’s dead foliage, I weeded, I divided, I moved a few plants around.  I’ve been picking and fussing at my beds for weeks. Now it’s time to let things be, just let things be, so the plants can go on their next growth spurt when they’re ready. It’s easy to over-garden in the Spring. At some point, you just need to hang back and let the rain and the sun do their thing. A watched flower doesn’t grow any faster. And beware of digging up weeds that aren’t actually weeds (always a danger when plants are small).

The bleeding heart plant in the photo below is the perfect mascot for the hands-off policy. The key to this plant coming back every year is to plant it in the right spot (semi to full shade) and then not touch it. It usually dies back to the ground by mid-summer, completely disappears, so I have to mark its spot with something so I don’t forget and dig it up next year. And then in the spring, without any interference from me, this happens. Magic, unaided by my meddlesome gardening.