ajuga patch

I use to live in a fourplex apartment building where the only place for a garden was a small patch of dirt with a dead tree stump in it.  I told my new boyfriend at the time that I wanted to plant flowers but the stump was in the way and I couldn't dig it up.   He said he’d give it a whirl because he was interested in starting a garden too.  

For hours he dug, rigged and wrangled.  He even tied one end of a rope to the axle of his ’86 Pontiac and the other to a root on the stump for the final pull, but that only loosened it up a little bit more.  Finally, he dug far enough underneath the root ball to wedge in a car jack that he used to slowly pry it out.  When the tree stump was on the curb and we were standing over the newly opened ground, I knew I’d found the person I wanted to marry.  

The little garden we ended up planting there was a treasure.  One plant that we fell in love with that was already growing all around that apartment building was a ground cover with dark waxy leaves and a beautiful spiky purple flower that blooms in April called ajuga (bugleweed).  When we bought our house five years ago, James brought over three shovelfuls and every year since he’s slowly spread it out along the edge of beds and in between stepping stones.  Right now it’s in bloom everywhere you look in our yard and it’s so beautiful.