Voluntarism

I wish I could say I had a hand in designing The Back Forty, but after several weeks of hand pulling weeds (as opposed to nuking them -- and anything else in a 20 mile radius -- with chemical weed and grass killer),  I begin to understand how happily I've lost control of the spread.

I mean, I've known for awhile at least 17 years that the BF owned me -- and not the other way around. The honest to god truth is that I've been completely overtaken by pleasantly ill-chosen, opportunistic and meglomaniacal perennials each with their own illusions of grandeur. At some point, after watching me plant and re-plant, fertilize and re-fertilize, lay out and re-lay-out garden plans, they finally sighed and said, "Let's put the poor woman out of her misery and just do this."

With the help of a cadre of sparrows, goldfinches, house finches, chickadees, juncos, nuthatches, robins and their incredibly hyperactive alimentary canals -- probably the most efficient seed spreader on the market -- new volunteers spring up in the most unlikely places -- and in the most unusual combinations -- every year. Raspberries and daphne, heliopsis and hosta, sedum and sunflowers. As a result,  I have a garden that is no where near what it was supposed to be.

It's random. But to parapharase -- The whole is pretty much more than the sum of its parts.

I think Aristotle may be onto something.

Happy Monday.