Myrtle Having Banner Year on Shady Side of the House

My last post was about Harry Potter. This one's about myrtle - but no, not Moaning Myrtle. This one's Trailing, and makes me happy.

I usually post about hit tv shows - and I hope devotees of Fox's House won't be misled by the title - but this post is not about that, either. It's about a hit plant...

Yeah ... about seven or eight years ago, I took a sprig of Trailing Myrtle (also known as Vinca minor or Periwinkle - great names - looks much like the above) and planted it on the side of our house that receives almost no sun. It was so shady there that even the few deep-forest ferns I planted were struggling. You could almost hear them gasping for sunlight. There were so few roots around that every good rain or melting snow - or worse, a hard rain after a deep freeze - had a fair chance of flooding our crawl space.

I pretty much forgot about the ferns and Myrtle, both.

But some of our trees were trimmed last Fall, and I just took a look at the side of our house, and the struggling plants are doing splendidly. The ferns are big and feathery. Trailing Myrtle covers almost the whole, formerly vacant area on the side of the house. Bright green leaves and little purple (my favorite color) flowers are everywhere.

And it did rain cats and dogs last week, and the crawl space got wet but not flooded.

Not to make too much of this, but I think there's a lesson here - sometimes it's good to just do one little thing, and then let it go, and see where the vagaries of nature and trimmed trees take it...

Ok - I'll be back later tonight with my review of The Sopranos ... I can't recall, does Tony have any interests in florist shops?