Blue garden

April brings the blue phase of our garden.  Mostly this is because I have let the forget-me-nots do what they do best and seed themselves wherever they like.  The flowers are so small that it is easy to think of them as a mass of blue hugging the edges of the garden beds.  But when I look closely at each individual flower, they are so sweet that I am beginning to understand their name!  Each flower has a vivid yellow and white star shaped center surrounded with five perfectly blue petals.  Amazing!

I used to transplant the little seedlings into neat borders around my garden beds in early Spring.  But times have changed.  I now have a job and three busy daughters, so the forget-me-nots have gotten the run of the place.  It's the same with the Welsh poppies.  I was so pleased when the wind (or possibly the birds) brought my garden it's first yellow poppy--now they are everywhere.  The white flowers of feverfew will be everywhere in another month or so and already the purple flowers of the money plant (which my girls loved when they were little) are mingling with the rhododendrons.  Any bare patch of soil is fair game.  The dandelions have their share of garden space too even though I do weed them out--when I actually get to weeding.

But the forget-me-nots are my favorite.  Our first plant was brought to the garden by Emily.  She was about three and she and my neighbor girl wandered back and forth between our two gardens.  She loved to pick flowers and one day brought an entire plant--roots dripping with soil where it just been yanked from the earth.  She was so pleased to bring me flowers and wanted to plant them.  Luckily our neighbor didn't mind the plant theft at all.  And that one little plant has lived over and over in our garden.