So, as I mentioned before, my neighbor chopped a nice whole in the front bed that separated a forsythia from a rhododendron, and that annoyed me immensely to boot.  Finally, after a weeks vacation in NH with Mom and my sister, we all came down here and went to a local nursery, where I bought a bunch of plants.  We the came back to my house and embarked on a 3 hour gardening festival that ended in the death of multiple weeds, one forsythia, and a large amount of bittersweet (which is the devil).  We replaced these casualties with 3 heuchera, 2 Japanese painted ferns, a Lady’s mantle, a delphinium, and an oakleafed hydrangea.

This is a nice article on edibles that grow in the shade. It even includes some recipes.

http://www.herbcompanion.com/gardening/7-herbs-that-grow-in-shade.aspx

So, four days ago, my neighbor decided that the house’s front garden was too overgrown.  He asked one roommate if he could trim the bushes on the edge of the driveway, and she said yes.  Then two days ago he came and manscaped one part of the front bed, including parts no where near the edge of the driveway, which meant I came home to a garden that look drastically and unexpectedly different.

Before:

After:

Another view where you can see the decidedly shorn nature of the forsythia and the artfully trampled foliage.

I have got to say, I never expected to have to ask a neighbor to stay the %#@ out of my garden beds.  I like a slightly overgrown garden, and certainly feel no need to prune my bushes into nice distinct entities.  I did plan to do some work in this bed though, and am annoyed that some of that work is no longer available to do.  I LIKE working in our garden, and don’t want someone else doing it for me.  I have talked to the neighbor, and I think he understands this, but honestly, I don’t know what I will do if he intrudes again.  Its just not something that one expects to have to deal with.  Has anyone else ever experienced something similar?  Suggestions?

Well, I have been riding my bike and not spending as much time in the garden, but stuff doesn’t stop growing even for cycling, so I do have some updates.  First off, the black Calla Lily has bloomed, and is probably one of my best impulse plant buys ever!

The strange tall plants that look vaguely like a peony appear to be about to flower.  The flower is still hard to see, but looks like a small green daisy at this point.  We’ll see what it develops into.  The plants themselves are around 4 ft high.  I’d still love an ID on them, and I’ll post pics as they mature.

The Nasturtiums are happily growing, and are finally producing a fair number of visible blooms, and have provided the new header you can see above.  The bike in that header is my beautiful new belt-drive single-speed called a Trek District.  For more on that look at this blog: http://trekdistrict.com.

Below you can see the wealth of ferns various friends have given me.  I think I have 5 different types of ferns back here!

Finally, after I moved it to a location with a bit more sun, the Mahonia is starting to grow!

Imagine my delight when I searched for shade plants and found this site!  32 matches for ferns (some are sold out), 52 vines and a delightful assortment of giant “architectural” plants.  Mom has already fallen for two Rodgersiae.  She’s a sucker for the big and weird of the plant world.

http://www.bigdipperfarm.com/cgi-bin/searchstuff.pl?Icons=Full-Shade

Our climbing rose has turned out to be a little white wild rose that I now notice flowering all over Boston.  It looks spectacular right now!

Our yard was clearly once fenced off from the neighbors. There are still the remains of fence posts rotting comfortably away on the edges of things to prove it. But fences are expensive to maintain, and my clearly extremely frugal landlord let them fall down and then dragged them off to finish decaying behind the garage.   They still make a nicely visible mess in some of my earlier pictures, and, though now covered with foliage, are nevertheless not going anywhere fast.  All this leaves me with the view of the porches of 5 different appartments.  Instinctually, I began to consider fencing.  I priced it online, I looked at in books, and I even collected it out of the trash.

As spring goes on, however, I keep dragging my feet, unwilling to block off sun from one neighbor’s new garden by a large fence, unwilling to wall out the cute two year old and his parents and unwilling to alienate people I have only just gotten to know while outside gardening, even if they are sometimes a bit surly.  So lets just say I’m trying a little fenceless experiment.  We’ll see how long it lasts.

Especially if they get tired of a short woman always poking around her garden while they are trying to quietly read a book on the porch and build their own fence.

I finally have enough spinach to do something more than a salad! This is just spinach and pasta, with the spinach dumped in last minute to cook it quickly and easily. I know, I know, its not as healthy as steaming it, but I’m lazy. I caramelized some onions with some oregano and rosemary and then tossed that with the noodles. And then, of course, the goat cheese…

So (with maternal assistance) I think I have figured out one of  our mystery plants of the moment.  Picture two is a type of Comfry, which is sometimes used for medicinal purposes.  The plant in the first picture may be a type of peony, but is still lurking about descreetly with no sign of flowering, so I’m still working on that one (while I should probably be working on other things of course).

Alright plant geeks, time to step up.  What are these little items?