Confessions of the Cat Lady (5) - The Devil's Garden

I love nature. All of it. I've always cared about the little flowers and the big trees. The little animals and big animals. I've always worried about them and try to help them. It can be very peaceful.

There's a time in the spring when other people are mowing and trying to make things neat, I kind of let things go. Very much so. Honesty grew up in the dirt driveway in different colors. There was lady's mantle. They would grow up and be all tangled together with some of the monkshood and it was so beautiful, to me. You had to be the kind of person who likes to allow plants growing, not all regimented in neat little rows.

As far as the plants go, I had seeds from everywhere. I bought some. I borrowed them from other people. They just showed up. The monkshood and wolfsbane I planted behind the house in my little cottage. It had whatever kind of weird plants I could find to put in it.

I owned a little house on the side that was my house absolutely, that I didn't share with my parents. There are some quirks I wanted to try. I did have poisonous plants in it. Thorn apple. Thorny seed pods. I had one of those growing there. They're very sturdy plants. I just wanted to have a few dangerous plants. I wasn't going to try to kill anybody. They're pretty sometimes.

Thorn apple has a blossom like a morning glory. I saw some in Gloucester on a traffic Island. I wasn't going to do anything bad with them. They're pretty plants, foxglove and monkshood. My sister comes and looks at it and says, "What is this, the Devil's Garden?" She's a botanist.

In the front of the house I had what I called the Magic Kitty Garden. It had a little fenced-in yard. There was a bird feeder. There was a little place to drink. I used to call that the Buzzy Wilson Memorial Drinking Hole. When my cat Buzzy was killed by coyotes, that made me very mad, so this was a place for them to drink. It had wind chimes hanging over it.

Why don't I put that old thing that's been laying around the yard in there and plant stuff around it?

That was a great place for plants. I had a partly enclosed garden to make it safer for the cats because the dogs were constantly going by. The cats like catnip and they like certain kinds of grass. I planted catnip. I mostly kept that in the house in pots. Once I bought seeds of cat grass at the pet store. They liked it. Wide blades of green grass, not very fancy looking. They eat it. They roll in the catnip, but I don't think they roll in the cat grass.

People sometimes plant with themes. My gardens were always eccentric. I planted what I wanted where I wanted it. When I wanted. It didn't always pass approval with people who like their plants all in a row. I was careful. If the weeds weren't bad looking I'd leave 'em. Some of them aren't that bad. Wild flowers like my wild cats. Sometimes there's something wild that should be left alone.