For fifteen years or more in our city house, I would plant flowers galore in our back yard and in attractive large pots on our patio. These flowers were mainly annuals. I planted so many that it was a very expensive venture.
But I loved them and Ed loved them. Even our son Henry loved the process and the effect. It made our little piece of city feel like an English country garden retreat. And so, every year - flowers; lots and lots of flowers. All neat, all orderly, no weeds.
Here in the rural area we live, which is mainly a farming community, you just don't see very many landscaped yards. You may see a plastic pot or two of annual flowers and you'll definitely see vegetable gardens, but nothing the way of the "English Country Garden / Flower Garden" look with waves of various multi-colored plantings that you might see in a magazine.
The funny thing is that I've always loved that English Country Garden / Flower Garden look. I dreamed of having land so that I could plant blooming perennials and flowering trees in waves of color. But now that we have our property I see things differently.
I now find that I love my weed patches and "tacky" spots of plantings (where Daylilies have grown in with the Peonies and our few Iris's have become somewhat overtaken by other long ago plantings. Our Orange Poppies are in an old tire versus an attractive clay pot. Lilac and Honeysuckle bushes are scattered with weedy understories. We have a side yard near our back deck that has a strip we're unable to mow because of all the pine tree stumps still remaining; it is full of various flowering weeds and bushes and I absolutely love it. I love all of the weedy / "messy" countryside of my yard and my community; it is perfect without having any perfection. In fact, it's absolutely the most beautiful place on earth precisely because it is "natural" and easy flowing and real.
(I know there are those that would challenge this broad statement; it's just how I've come to feel.)
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