Warren wrote:

Robert Chambers wrote:

Nice to have a surprise garden in a new house!

Not always.

The house I bought a few years back had a mature landscape. Lots of
really great stuff.

But when things started sprouting, I never knew if I was looking at
weeds, or something that was supposed to be there. I ended up leaving
some weeds take over a couple of spots before I knew what they were.

That was my experience last summer with the mallow: I didn't realize it
was a weed until it had colonized a good chunk of my wildflower garden.
(Back in Minneapolis, I had some nice-looking mallow with striped
purple flowers, but the stuff here takes up a lot of space and isn't
very pretty.) As for the mint, I knew that it was technically a weed,
but it didn't bother me; there are weeds and then there are WEEDS.

Moving to a completely different climate (Zone 4 to Zone 8) has been a
challenge. Dandelions and sorrel I know, but there are a lot of other
things that I've never seen before. But today, Jan. 27, I put pansies
in a window box and had the screens open, so I'm not complaining.

Adam