The writing will come later tonight, when the house is quiet.

Earlier today I did some repotting of plants in the front courtyard. When we moved out of our rental house a year ago, it was hard to leave a first native garden. It wasn’t very big but it was our first. So in a fit of attachment disorder anxiety I potted up whatever I could to take with me. The intention isn’t to have a courtyard full of native plants (and actually it will be the one place that I plant the exotics) but for now it has become the nursery because it is easier to take care of them all together in one place.

It’s a mess because I just tossed things in the few pots we had on hand together so there are tons of things that really need their own pot. There are several pots of hummingbird sage with multiple plants to be divided. Some buckwheat. blue-eyed grass, a bit of black sage and a few more plants that I can’t remember and have to look up.

Today I tackled just one plant Dichondra (the type of which is in question.) A few years ago Erin at Native Revival gave me a little 4″ pot of this when I asked her for something to grow between stepping stones that could take light foot traffic. It was the most forgiving of plants at the old house. I planted it between stepping stones in full sun, gave it water and it took off. When there was a plumbing problem and the drain guy dug up a bunch of it and just dumped it in a pile and basically buried it, it found its way to the top of the pile.

It was the last plant I went back to grab before we moved. There was just this one clay pot and I dug up a chunk and left it alone. It filled the pot in no time. This morning I divided it into 15 small pots. It doesn’t look like much now, but you have to imagine a blanket of it on the ground – lushness all around. Trust me. It will be good.

I would rather be doing the actual planting in the ground but at least this helped me feel a bit more connected to the garden. And perhaps, a little bit more like the main character in my WIP.