Garden dreams

I didn't think I would grow flowers here. The wild sheep wander around eating whatever they please, so I thought it would be a bit pointless unless I wanted to provide new taste treats for them. They ignore some flowers -- the foxgloves down in the lower apple grove, the blue flag iris along the shore, the wild roses, the spring daffodils and late summer goldenrod -- and they eat the red clover and the ox eye daisies whether I want them to or not. I thought I would just live with it. Besides, we put in a vegetable garden -- a big one -- last summer. How many gardens does one person need?

Then Greg put a picket fence around the side of the house, with gates to keep the sheep out. (Please don't ask where the fence came from. It was of no use at all where it was before.) And, mysteriously, an entire bed of mallows sprang up within this fence, where I had dug beds the summer before but not planted anything. They stood gracefully nodding their pink and white heads all summer long. Those mallows got me thinking that I might have just the tiniest little flower garden after all.

So late in the summer I moved them around and gave them more space. Then I moved some mullein inside the fence. I love their broad fuzzy grey leaves, and the bees are so glad to cling to those yellow spires, and I thought a patch of it would look good next to the narrow walk that Greg had made with the old chimney bricks.  

I dug up some yarrow and put it inside the fence, where it flourished as it never had in the field. One day a bold lamb walked through the open gate and in a few minutes had eaten all the yarrow flowers. That's how I learned that sheep like yarrow, and also that it had been doing well because nobody had been eating it. Come to think of it, maybe sheep like mallows, too. After that we did a better job of keeping the gate closed.

Then I sat on the wooden bench by the side door in the sun and dreamed. I would gather more island wildflowers and put them into the little garden. I didn't have any money to spend at Spencer's Garden Centre in Shelburne, much as I love wandering around there. So making a garden of local wildflowers fit our frugal life. And I wanted to collect them into one place where we could see them every day. That clump of white foxglove down in the lower orchard was a gorgeous sight, but we hardly ever noticed it in our comings and goings.  And I wanted flowers that were already at home.

So in late fall I transplanted goldenrod and foxglove and blue iris and orange day lilies and violets and asters -- whatever I could find. Some will do well inside the picket fence and some will not, I guess. It was only out of respect for Greg that I didn't include any Canadian thistle. Our opinions differ on that plant. There was phlox growing in the stone cellar foundation of Benjamin McNutt's house. I climbed down in there and dug up some of it, and also collected its feathery seeds. At least I hope that's what I got.  We'll find out when spring comes.