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Trying to take over the garden


Posted at 12:01 am

I love mint. I love the scent, I love the varieties and I love the adorable square stems. I have a small patch of mint in my front yard. Until recently, I was convinced I had the best behaved mint in the world.

If you’ve grown mint, you know it spreads, and spreads fast. I knew mint was hard to kill, my mother had a patch and it happily thrived and spread, even while neglected during hot Boise summers.

So when my mint stayed neatly contained within its little patch, I was pleased. Confused, but pleased. One day, I was bragging about my well-behaved mint to a friend.

“Oh, no, no, no,” my husband said. “It spreads.”

Turns out he knew about mints’ invasive ways, and had been putting a labor-intensive stop to it. So much for my well-behaved mint.

Since then, I’ve come across renegade sprigs frequently while weeding. Even then I can’t really get annoyed, it smells so great when it’s pulled up.

The California poppies, though, those are spreading like wildfire. I’m glad I’m not the one who planted them, I’d hate to have to blame myself for all the work it is to keep them from swallowing the garden. I think they would move inside, if I gave them the chance.
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