One of the great things about kids is that they are not just little clones of me walking around. The are little beings with their own unique personalities. And because of that, my garden is much more interesting and eclectic than it probably would be if I was doing it on my own.

Case in point: the toad abode. If you subscribe to our magazine you will see that in our June issue we are running an article about creating a frog-friendly garden. And I knew it was on the editorial calendar, read and edited the story, and even proofed the pages in layout, and it never once dawned on me to create a toad abode.

Then my daughter brought home a flier for Earth Day, and it had cute instructions (and a beautiful picture) on creating your own toad abode. So you know what? We did it. I dug the hole for the pot, Carter brought some dead leaves and Caroline collected the moss. (“I didn’t take away any fairies, Mom,” she told me. That’s when I remembered I had told her one time that fairies build their houses in moss.)

I love it. It makes a great addition to our yard. And hopefully a little toad will eventually take up residence.

I am a person who likes to make lists. I start every day with a list of things I need to get done that day. And while many days not everything gets crossed off, I always try to put something on there that I know I will be able to cross off. Something easy, or something I know I will do no matter what, like “water the plants.”

Part of this is because I like to plan, and I like things to work out according to plan. You may say that’s not easy with gardening. And it’s not always, squash plants get powdery mildew, roses get black spot, and those freesia bulbs I planted last fall never grew more than an inch tall this spring. But for some reason that stuff doesn’t bother me. All in all, things go the way you expect them to in the garden. And as a mother of two young children, whose spontaneous little lives mean much of my world doesn’t go according to plan, it’s nice to have a constant in the garden.

So a few weeks ago, after my husband so gallantly tilled up the garden, I made a plan. Here it is, for all to see my horrible handwriting.

“Is this to some sort of scale?” my husband cautiously asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Then how do you know you’ll have space?”

“I know because it worked out last year.

And it did. I purchased seedlings and seeds from our local hardware store last week, waited until Saturday morning to plant anything because my first grader wanted to help so bad (thanks to Grandma buying both children new red shovels) and got everything in the ground and mulched before the rain started Saturday afternoon. Just according to plan. (The kids even got disinterested and went to swing after planting the three rows of corn and a couple of hills of squash and cucumber, again, just as I had planned!)

Now we’re waiting, just like last spring. I’ve found myself looking out each morning to make sure the entire garden wasn’t grazed by deer, and so far we’re in luck. And while a child might throw up in the middle of the night, making our plans for a day trip the next day change, or the school will send home notice of a PTA meeting that I somehow overlooked, I will roll with the punches life throws at me a little better, because I know there’s something going according to plan. It’s out there, a few feet from the house, where the seeds I planted will most definitely grow into plants, and whether I get 3 tomatoes or 30, I know I will get some. And they will be wonderful!

It’s a popular trend on Mommy blogs to have “true confessions.” That means writing about things like letting your child cry while you step outside to sit in peace and quiet on the porch for a minute, or throwing away the dirty underwear rather than washing it out after one too many accidents.  As a mom of young children, I know why those blogs are popular. It’s because we all do things we’re somewhat ashamed of, and it makes us feel better to know others are out there doing them too, and their kids are okay.

So maybe the same is true in the garden world. I’m here to try it out. Today’s blog is my first “garden confessions.” I have to confess that I’m horrible at remembering the names of plants. Absolutely horrible.  I’ve depended on my grandmother for years to help me know what’s what in the garden, but even then I don’t always remember.

The problem is painfully and shamefully obvious to me this year. I’ve been working with Carolina Gardener in some form or fashion for many years, but having this blog and actually documenting my own personal gardening trials and tribulations has made me a little more attune to what I’m doing.

So this spring, this wonderful bush has blessed me with a fire of hot-pink flowers. I had no idea it would bloom like this! Maybe it said that on the plant tag when I bought it. But that was a couple of falls ago, from a sale rack at a big box store, when it was just a twig. Since then it survived being laid on by my dog for a complete summer and not only having it’s growth stunted, but having it grow in a somewhat haphazard manner once it got going again. Maybe that’s why it didn’t bloom like this last spring. So now I’d like to know what it is. And I have to admit, I probably will forget again.

Here's a close up:

This red bush isn’t the only plant in my garden that I don’t know it’s name. There are quite a few perennials that pop up each year that I absolutely love, but I couldn’t tell you what they are. And there are a few that I pride myself on having learned their names, thanks to great articles and photos in Carolina Gardener and paying attention on visits to public gardens.

Unfortunately it’s not just plant names I forget. Apparently I also forget what I’ve planted in the fall. This is a clump of something that’s coming up right now, and I have absolutely no memory of planting it. Maybe it’s some seeds of something I threw out? Maybe it’s another on-sale perennial I rescued at the very end of the fall last year? I’m watching it anxiously, waiting for it to get big enough to try to identify, and hoping that in the meantime it can survive without thinning. I don’t want to pull any of it up until I know what it is!

The fun of these blogging confessions is that, just like confessing sins, it always feels a little better just to get the worry off your chest. Now I’ve admitted in public I don’t know what this bush is. Lightening didn’t strike me down, and it doesn’t mean I’m a bad gardener because I don’t know it’s name. Just like the mommy bloggers, the important thing is that even if we’re throwing away and buying new underwear for the potty-training preschooler instead of washing it out, through it all we love our kids with all our heart. And just because I might not know what these two plants are doesn’t mean I don’t love them. Now, off to enjoy these fleeting blooms before they fall off!