I almost hate to add in something so bourgeois as the picture below into the middle of an upscale series of nice native prairie wildflowers. I'll also admit that I'm a little ashamed to reveal this hideous mess to my fellow gardening masses, but I feel I have to show you something both wild, and flowery in my garden, even if it's not "native."
This is a small raised bed at the "point" of our circular...eerrhh...teardrop-shaped driveway. I established the bed years ago solely to give people a little obstacle to make sure they stayed on the blacktop when they entered the circle. It was originally made of native prairie limestone and a bit taller, until She Who Doesn't Make Use Of RearView Mirrors backed into it while turning around and dented a fender and I realized that I needed to make it short enough to go under the car in case of emergency. Anyway, I used to plant tulip and daffodil bulbs in this arid, windswept location until the deer and neighbor dogs conspired to destroy them. Last year, I had planted a single red superpetunia in the bed, a seedling potted at a February garden show by my daughter, and it covered the bed in rapid fashion. So this year, thinking that petunias were at least the most economical choice for this spot, if admittedly not the most aesthetic, I purchased the yellow petunias and red salvias that you see above (if you look hard enough) in an effort to give it a nice ambiance. Unfortunately, or fortunately, last year's petunia, now self-seeded and some variation of mauve, has decided to claim the bed for itself. Stupid me, I was under the impression that petunias were annuals and wouldn't reseed in this northern climate. I guess they are annuals, but the self-seeded plants have already outgrown the headstart given my greenhouse-grown, purchased plants.
Well, it ain't perfect, but if the Petunia From Hell wants to self-seed and help me save my gardening pennies for other things, who am I to stop it? Until it eats the blacktop, it can thrive here all it wants. If only the color was something beside mauve.
