Flowers are OK, too

I'll confess that as a gardener, I'm rather edibles obsessed. I admire others' flower beds and think, Oh, that would be nice. But then I pick up some seed catalog and can't help myself from ordering mundane-looking yet delicious vegetables. Flowers, if they must be grown, are for eating, such as nasturtiums.

In the past couple of years, however, flowers have, if you'll pardon the pun, begun to grow on me. Last year, it was sunflowers and zinnias providing some color, and this year it's a wider array, with yarrow, alyssum, and other fun things added to the mix, even snapdragons and petunias, those stalwarts of the annual annuals ritual. Part of this conversion is due to the fact that a space that was occupied by a stand of dour eastern red cedars is now wide open, as the last semi-healthy cedar was damaged by a nasty ice storm last December. Actually, I'm not sure it wouldn't have bounced back just fine, but I was tired of it and its space- and light-eating ways. As my wife put it the other day, this yard was filled with way too many things that hurt when you run into them. No longer, thankfully. Some pretty sharp barberries in front of the house are next on the list.

The kids seem to like flowers, too, and anything that increases their interest in gardening is a good thing. Here's my youngest tending to the young flowers, to which she is very attached. Note the red cedar stump that I left as a bird perch and visual "feature." That's the story, anyway. Really, I don't have a chainsaw and there's only so much cutting one can do with a simple crosscut saw before one's arm nearly falls off.