Volunteers in the Garden

Our little backyard has no grass. What it has is a weed barrier with mulch on top. We do this for two reasons.

1. It's a trip from the garage in the front to the backyard with a lawnmower because we have to go around the next townhouse and then go through the gate into our backyard.
   
   
2. The ground/soil here is awful, and the grass that grew, or didn't grow as the case may be, was pretty doggone pathetic.

Although mulched, it's not exactly barren; we do keep five flower pots back there. There is also a tree, a lilac bush, a big joe pye plant, plus two little flowerbeds at the back by the fence. One of the flowerbeds has a big Hosta and a little inuksuk. The other has a penstemon and daylilies.

The main mulched part actually looks pretty good, or at least it did in previous years. It's clean look, at least, and dad's forget-me-nots still, somewhat miraculously, sprout in the mulch in spring.

That's in most years, but it's different this year, for volunteer petunias are running rampant. Sue took this photo from the bedroom window. I have labelled the potted petunias. The rest are volunteers growing in the soil-less mulch.

While I have seen the occasional volunteer petunia before, I find this mass to be quite astounding,  In the photo, the flowers above the potted plant extend quite a way toward and even under the deck, blocked from in the photo by the deck and potted plant.

Keep in mind that petunias are annuals here, but somehow, seeds have lived through the winter and flowered in the mulch – mulch, not soil.

Here is another, wider view, with the two pots circled; the rest are volunteers.

I am not sure if I like this helter-skelter look. I think I prefer the clean look of the bare mulch, but I do find the resilience of the flowers to be mighty impressive. They say that life finds a way, and so it has in our backyard.