A perennial is like a daughter, you have her for life; an annual is like a son, you have him until he finds a wife. Not the greatest analogy but you get the idea, assuming you know the old adage, “A daughter is a daughter all of your life; a son is a son until he takes a wife.” Of course, some sons keep their old parents in mind, my uncles phoned their mother every weekend, some phoned everyday, and my Uncle Alex visited his mother every Sunday and took her for a drive. Had it been my uncle's father instead of his mother, maybe he wouldn't have visited as often. Mothers are the center of the family, fathers often peripheral. But fathers can have other relationships, a second or third wife, or a girlfriend, or friends or acquaintances, or a dog or cat or a goldfish.
And in gardening we have perennial plants, they return every year. That is part of the beauty of perennials, you aren't planting a new garden every year, the old garden comes back to life in the spring. And when your perennials get big enough you might want to divide them and move some of them to other places in your garden. I have a really nice row of hostas in the back of the garden, divided and planted last fall, and they helped to pull the garden together.
This hosta, in the photo, is in our front garden, and it had to be moved because I am planning to have some work done to the front of the house; this is how easy it is to dig up and divide hostas. It takes all of a minute or two to dig up the plant, it has a large root ball, and then divide it into three parts, that's what I did. And then I planted the three "new" hostas in different parts of the garden behind the house. After the work on the front of the house is done I have four other hostas I plan to divide and plant in an area that needs some upgrading... but that might have to wait until late October or even early November, still time enough to do this work, and other gardening, before winter comes in December.
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| Planning to divide these hostas next |
