Gardening at dawn sounds like an extreme sport, but it isn’t at our house. Before I go into the garden, we take an hour’s walk to the creek and have a leisurely breakfast on the screened porch. My goal was to expose all the boundary stones before the first frost. We inherited this garden with the house, and I had no idea how to take care of it. The owner said all I’d need to do was keep it weeded. That was a challenge, since I could not distinguish weed from prized plant. The solution? Wait a year to see what bloomed nicely and what seemed exceptionally greedy. In that period of time, and probably before we moved in, some plants took advantage of my ignorance. The worst two I later found out were creeping thyme and that wicked wisteria covering the pergola. By waging war on the wisteria, I seemed to keep ahead of it this year. Thyme had crept everywhere – sneaking into the two rose bushes, threatening a young crepe myrtle, obliterating a stone pathway, and totally hiding two rock gardens. Low-growing evergreens had jumped their stones, too. That’s where this onslaught began when sister-in-law Beth and grandson David helped expose the triangular boundary.

I don’t remember how I found the stones that must have originally been rock gardens. I don’t consider myself powerful, but believe me, I had some pull when it came to those areas! They looked quite raw and will be that way until I decide what to do with them. Meanwhile, the creepy herb will waste no time trying to reclaim the garden and take over the porch while it is at it. Vigilance is the name of the game.

I’ll include a sneak preview of the water feature that John and grandson Nathaniel installed this summer. The photo was taken from the side, because the front is not ready to be shown yet. It looks a bit raw, since the surrounding plants have not filled in the area. Don’t suggest it. Creeping thyme could have done the job overnight.

This day needed to be marked as a major milestone. All of the stones laid out by the first owner have now been exposed. This reluctant gardener has a lot to learn, but I think the over-eager plants have met their match for the time being.