My name is Calypso, my garden overflows

My unruly and untame wildflower garden brings me much happiness. It knows no rules and I don't discipline it. Thing grow wherever they germinated, whether I planted them myself or not. What was once a patch of dirt, litter and clods of dead grass is now lushly green and impossibly dense and is swallowing up the little white fence that can't contain it.

It's like the garden of a pleasantly mad scientist. It is shaggy and tousled, to be enjoyed without over-grooming. The enriched potting soil I put down in April not only nurtured the wildflower seeds, but also plants that grow native in the neighborhood. The wildflowers share space with red clover and shamrock. The vine climbing up the porch will produce morning glories that will be truly glorious. The foxglove bulbs have come up. At the moment and by pure coincidence, everything currently blooming is either red, white or blue. Maybe it's getting ready for the 4th of July.

I'm sure some people walking by it on the street think it's ugly. Anyone who prefers perfect Chem-Lawn-y grass lawns would shake their heads in disgust at such an overgrown mess. But what I love about Somerville is that even though each house in the tightly packed neighborhoods has only a table-top sized patch of land to call a yard, everyone does something different with theirs. I love the people who grow vegetable gardens in their front yards. And the grape arbors. And the rose gardens and mammouth flower bushes that take up a whole little yard. I have my odd little wildflower jungle. It makes it feel like home.