It's official: Melissa officinalis sure gets around

As I mentioned before, the lemon balm, aka Melissa officinalis, LIKE THE MINT, is slowing making its way around the garden.  In the path... in the gutter areas... by the compost bin.. in random places in the yard.

In the yard it will just get mowed of course, cool, fine.

In random places in the garden beds, not so good.  Plus, I like to utilize this stuff or at least give the herb away so others can enjoy the agony of keeping it in order it's lemony presence.

As its Greek/Latin name says, Melissa means bee and you can surmise this is a great bee attractor with its tiny little flowers develop later.  This is a plus as I am trying to attract more pollinators, so the plan is rather than seek and eat/destroy this herb, I'll be moving it around to far corners of the yard to try to increase bee/pollinator production, yet keep it in places where I hopefully will not accidentally drag seed around when I cut the stalks.  It's always so hard for me to cut the stalks when there are flowers on it because the nectar starved bees go at them even when they're in seed it seems.  Another note: CARRY A PLASTIC BAG TO HOLD SEEDS IN WHEN I CUT THE SEED STALKS OFF.  This would probably prevent all the seeds from going everywhere in the first place.

Unorganized gardening (bending down for a weed here that catches my eye, pruning there) walking aimlessly around in the garden is fine, fun and relaxing, but you'd think I'd have learned my lesson with crazy plants like perilla/shiso/beefsteak plant and now lemon balm.  Brill.

Birds and the bees...

This post is sort of a self congratulatory pat on my back, not entirely out of ego, but because I am thrilled to have attracted so much cool stuff to my garden: birds, squirrels/chipmunks (not always good to have around, but fun to watch and entertain the dog with), various bees, hummingbirds, assassin bugs, praying mantises, tree frogs, toads and even snakes are all cool!

Most of the work done to attract all of this wildlife was through happenstance and some actual hard work on my end (do you have any idea how many toads I carried back to my garden?)


Quite a few of the birds that have flocked to my garden (which reminds me, I need to built birdhouses for) came due to prodigious amounts of seed I left out which also attracted squirrels/chipmunks (unfortunately who were then attracted to my attic... another story for another time). The birds have further stayed and produced bird babies all around who feed their way on an accidental wild woodland strawberry groundcover I acquired from a plant trading section. I didn't even know I picked up some of the plant, but it covers nearly all of a helpful location i was tired of mulching.

Forgotten overturned pots and large flat rocks provided safe spots and nooks and crannies for toads who have in turn attracted snake(s) who hopefully will rid me of some chipmunks :)
The chipmunks too have been helpful though by planting all these sunflower seeds that had been for the birds and I always have a sunflower somewhere, which makes MORE sunflowers to attract the seed eaters.

Even my accidental spots of standing water, terrible mosquito breeding grounds I know, but the dragonflies near the lake have popped on by to make themselves at home here too.

It's all pretty remarkable and makes you want to sing the "Circle of Life," huh?

Actually that might be a little too saccharin even for me and that was my college graduation song. Made me feel like I was preparing to get eaten by a lion. Thanks for preparing me for life Purdue!

All in all, this is just a post about me blathering on about how happy I am that I'm not the only one enjoying my garden. Now if only I could make the squash vine borers not enjoy it.