Honor our Volunteers

Let me preface this by saying in humility that I have attended and passed the classwork for the Master Gardener class offered by the Michigan Extention Agency.  I'm not a wonderful gardener however.

The part I love is the beginning of the season, hopeful, grubbing around in the dirt part of gardening.
By Harvest----which is supposed to be the Big Payoff, I'm disinterested. 

Thanks to feeding the birds, we have these happy faces this week. 

Our gardening plan is to eliminate all grass, and so we plant weedy perennials known to be pesky invaders, hoping they will invade the lawn.

Uh-uh.  Our grass is so powerful that it resists this sensible plan.  Our lovely invasive purple violets have spread to the cracks in the old driveway.  I don't have the heart to use weed killer on them.

I'm amazed that these sunflowers survived.  One summer afternoon, Photographer Son and I sat enjoying the deck and watching a chipmunk systematically mow down the sunflower line.  I guess he wasn't as thorough as he thought.

We are enjoying these at the height of their showy splendor, though.  The deer will come through one of these nights and enjoy them, too.  Little blessings---enjoy them while they're there.