Our Ostrich Ferns - 2012

I've been drawn to ferns for as long as I can remember.  Perhaps it started with my mother and her ability to craft a shade garden.  We grew up on a heavily wooded lot that saw little direct sunlight.  That didn't stop her from going crazy with hostas.  They grow great in the shade and as a perennial, come back every year.  Things couldn't be easier.

When we bought our hose, the wicked old lady who owned it before us, dug up all of her plants and took them with her when she left.  I wasn't happy at the time as there were quite a few peonies and hostas that were mature and we saw during our inspection.  But, thinking back, that harvesting of her plants turned out to be a good thing.  We basically got to start over.  We re-dug and edged new beds.  We put down mulch where there wasn't any mulch.  And, we planted new stuff that *we* liked (and....that was usually on sale at Menards or Home Depot.)

But, in the back corner of our lot, right next to our neighbor's compost pile popped out a few little Ostrich Ferns.  Aha!  The mean old lady didn't get *everything* from her yard and left behind (at least) a few of these little ferns.

But, the back corner is where we put our swingset, so I had to relocate them.  Two summers back, I dug them out and put them up in one of our beds that gets some shade.  And those two little plants have  multiplied.  In that photo above, there's 10 stands of ferns now.  And...there's even more that I moved to the north side of our house last year.  They're growing like crazy in both spots and I couldn't be happier.  Later this summer, I'll divide these above a bit more and get even more growing on the north side of our house where we are almost all shade all day long.