Volunteers

Our yard was a jungle from all the rain. Bob is the mower in the family and he did try to keep it under control, but every time he went out to cut it, it rained and everything grew back again -- overnight, it seemed. That was a downer. On the up side, along with the crabgrass and other weeds, some beautiful plants appeared. Bob calls them "volunteers."

In the area next to our vegetable garden -- also overgrown, of course -- a bunch of clover sprang up. (I don't know if it's really clover. I don't know how to identify plants, except for a few basic ones.) Whatever it is, it's soft pretty stuff and we like it so we've kept it. I also like our spearmint. We've tried to grow it in the garden, but it's stubborn. It prefers the back yard. Bob was brave yesterday. He took the trusty mower out and did the deed -- or most of it. The clover or whatever-it-is has grown to such a height that I'm not sure how he'll manage that. It's a Herculean task. But the rest of the yard looks nice.

There's a patch of something new. Looks like the lily-of-the-valley that used to grow in my grandmother's garden: delicate white flowers drooping on their stems. "Hiding their faces under their bonnets," she'd tell me when I was a little girl. "Because they're shy." He cut around that little fairy family, leaving it untouched in the middle of the newly mowed lawn. Now we can actually see the roses coming into bloom, previously hidden by the overgrowth.