The "Lazy" Gardener's Guide: Foodscaping and Found Gardening

Dianne's sister said something about Dianne that set me free. It was over a month ago and I need to paraphrase, but it was something like: "The trouble with Dianne's way of gardening is that she waits to find plants. She can't plan out her gardens, so ..." There my attention went haywire. Wait!  I thought to myself. That is why I love her gardening.

Before I took off for the first of two  long business trips, Dianne emailed a plea for someone to rescue the bargain she'd piled up at the church gardens. Begonias, annuals of various ilk, and a few other markdowns were waiting to be put in the garden. These days, Dianne's crazy busier than me, or as busy, with her nursing courses. I skipped Bible study and just dug up the dirt wherever, thinking of her 'trouble' of gardening whichever way strikes her fancy. That's why she's so generous with roots and cuts, and said to me last year, "No big deal if you don't like where you put it. Just move it."

I got it! Finally I got that she gardens in freedom and love. Last year, I moved the peony bushes crying about them, because I love peonies and hydrangeas but the darned lead in my soil meant I needed to move those bushes to the front garden, formerly established for foodscaping, so I could foodscape where my daffodils, tulips and peonies once made my blase property look new and quaint.

The front lawn last year before our native soil tested 4000 ppm of lead.

My front lawn this year with donated bricks, starts of pilgrim cranberry, rescued easter lilies, day lilies, transplanted peonies, clematis starts, ivy, columbines, creeping thyme, and later, I hope some sweet woodruff, hydrangea and chives, I hope make this lovely.

This year the front lawn is being re-scaped, but with my anti-grass ethic. I am tired of the 'perfect' lawn ethic. I'm too lazy for hand weeding the dandelions and clover. I'm too anti-pesticide to hire the chemkillers to come murder more than 'weeds.' Weeds, it turns out, have become lunch recently. A little reading has educated me on scavenge eating and forage gardening. Many greens we spray are rich in vitamins and minerals, as well as flavor.

In that spirit I found this article today from NPR's The Salt Blog:
Tired of Mowing Your Lawn? Try Foodscaping Instead

I cannot foodscape here, but Dianne's front gardens are the height of beauty and practicality. I follow her lead. Forced to practice a senseless act of beauty in this front bed, I tip my hat Dianne, my gardening hero, a woman of the free-spirit love of God's green earth. She does not fight God's creation, but remembers that a garden grows under seasons we can n'er control. We will love what we do if garden more like her.  Hats off to Dianne. (No, wait, wear a hat. Ticks are awful.)