Right about now, over at the home of Muse-ings , vsperry will be orchestrating order in an area of her garden which she describes as “A Fine Mess”. I would simply leave out the word “Mess” and call it “Fine”, or, as in the case of my own garden, refer to the “Mess” as ” Channelling one’s inner “Piet Oudolf” (with apologies to Piet 😉 ).
For the greater part of the summer and fall, this wilderness of mostly self-sown plantings was the scene from my bedroom window.
Wilderness plantings
It was a sight that gave me much pleasure, for all the weeds, entangled foliage and seeming disorder.
Disorder?
The garden bed was not carefully planned like one of Piet Oudolf’s masterpieces (OBVIOUSLY), but I did have a plan of sorts, which was to let the garden follow its own course and,
Following their own rules? Lightly organised chaos?
thus, provide a dense and closely woven safe haven for the monarch caterpillars, and a well-stocked larder for the bees and their larger selves, the humblebees.
A haven for a caterpillar?
My plan was a success buzz vis-a-vis buzz the bees, but a failure as far as the monarchs were concerned. Not one of the many caterpillars made it to butterfly status. That was a disappointment, after my successful monarch season last year, where I helped raise at least twenty monarch butterflies. I don’t know what went wrong this time; perhaps we had too much rain; too little sun? Or, as Russel Ray pointed out to me, my wilderness garden may have provided a haven for the social wasp, arch-enemy of the monarch.
So, with winter approaching and no longer any chance of monarchs, I embarked on a clean up of the little plot. It now looks like this. Clean and tidy….and dull. Not a “Mess” but also not “Fine”. Not yet, anyway. There’s good manure in the soil, and worms, and caterpillar plus bee frass,
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- All cleaned up
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- and tidily dull
so, in a few months, it may provide solace for my senses once again. And, later, much later, the monarchs may be tempted to return. I hope so. I know the bees will come.
Virginia, how is your clean up going? There is no danger that your garden will succumb to DULL. 🙂 It will be clean, tidy and finer than ever.
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