by Beverly Jenkins

I had no idea what I was going to blog about today, but when I saw the hummingbird come zooming in this morning looking for a hit on the Rose of Sharons that haven't bloomed yet, I yelled Eureka!

Gardening. Some may consider gardening a pretty mundane and passive subject, but my daughter calls what I do "Extreme Gardening".

My mom gardened when my siblings and I were young and we all hated it. There are seven of us and we were her unpaid crew. She made us weed, haul dirt, weed, and weed some more. Did I mention we hated it?

When I turned fifty, I got the gardening bug bad. I started out with a little small area in the middle of the yard that grew in size every year. My poor husband, thinking I had designs on all the grass, tried fencing me in with pavers and that held me in check for a while, but now the space is a 25' x35' monster that blooms from March until the first frost with crocuses, daffs, my signature purple tulips, Shasta daisies, African daisies, zinnias, 6ft hollyhocks, 8ft burgundy sunflowers, giant zinnias, milkweed (for the monarch butterflies), black-eyed susans, a zillion lilies of all types (when the rabbits don't eat them), and anything else I can find space for.

So my question for you is: Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, how does your garden grow??