Little Miracles

Ten years ago, my mom was helping clean out my grandmother’s house. Since we had recently moved to a house of our own, my mom and my sister dug up 25 varieties of my grandma’s hostas (she had over 90) and brought them here to be planted. Wouldn’t you know, every single one “took”, and at least for a couple of years, we had all of them.

Unfortunately, I found out that if I don’t keep the arbor vitae in check, the hostas suffer. And so I lost a couple of hostas that way. A couple didn’t come back, and one was struggling and accidentally got run over by the neighbor with a lawn mower. Most of them were still there, though.

Last year, I was so overwhelmed with everything that I barely even looked at the yard. I mowed the lawn, I kept the thistles from going completely out of control, but I had no time or energy for any of the flowers or anything we usually would have. Sometime in late summer, I glanced up at where there had been a whole row of hostas, and while a couple were there, it looked like the whole section was mostly weeds. It’s not that I didn’t care, but I just didn’t have the energy to deal with it.

In any case, one of the reasons I trimmed back the arbor vitae a few weeks ago was because I knew that if there was any hope of salvaging any of the hostas, they’d have to get enough light to grow. I spent a couple of hours cutting things back, listening to Jonathan Pageau on my headphones whilst doing it.

Well, it seems like most of those in the above picture are still there. A couple look more or less normal:

And as I started searching around, I discovered that many of the others are at least trying to come up this year. I may have lost one completely, but it looks like there’s hope for some of the others.

I hope some sunshine and continued weeding will help these this year. And this weekend? Well, there are more hostas to rescue from the weeds on the other side of the arbor vitae! *L*

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