Intro: BIO: Hiya (Melissa Hellen)

New to the list but not to perennials; hello, people.
Name's Melissa Hellen.

 I live in S-SW Ohio which I think is zone 5. We get below zero
occasionally here, but not often, not every year. In the summer the
weather gets up to a hundred nearly every year for at least a  couple
of days ('oh God, not another heat wave! Quick, the cold cloth and the
spritzer!') It's rather humid after May. Winters are typically kind of
dry, with scant snow and cold temps--tough on perennials. I try to
water during the January thaw if I remember.

I've never been good about keeping track of the official names of my
garden, because I don't often get what I have from retail sources, but
I've been an enthusiastic collector of slips, starts and trades all my
life and have been known to cadge entire lilac hedges from people who
were drubbing them out of the ground and tossing them away
(PHILISTINES!!!). I have a representative of just about every old
fashioned shrub in my yard and when I moved to this house in about '83
I inherited what has to be a near-hundred year old Texas quince bush
that has a massive root system (it's invaded nearly the entire  yard
and I'm constantly cutting roots any time I cultivate the soil or
plant something) and is about 12 feet high and 25 feet long-guess it's
graduated into a hedge-and now has a bower carved under it with a
swing tucked beneath-ah, nice.

I love perennials because I'm often incapacitated with various
illnesses that sap my endurance and am very grateful for my shaggy
'secret garden' which often looks more like the 'before' version than
the 'after', but  mostly takes care of itself every and cheers my
heart with its soft colors and the neighbourhood birds and wildlife.
Last year my garden gave me the blessing of seeing a juvenile
cardinal, fresh out of the nest, half-fledged and too naive to fear
me. I got to see him from about six inches away perched shakily on the
low branch of a young crab apple--the poor mom and dad nearly had a
heart attack! She looked like an extension of the pink and brown crab
apple with her half-grown plumage and had only one feather stuck up
straight on top of her head where eventually she'd have her little
cardinal's crest--gosh, she was silly-looking . . . but so precious.

Anyway, that's me and mine. Glad to be here and I hope this wasn't too
long or rambling. It's difficult to shut up about my flowers once I
get started.

Melis

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