I exit my house by the kitchen door, which takes me first to the woodland garden. The first thing I see I also recognize - greater celandine, which I battle all summer. I pounce on it and ruthlessly uproot it. From my stooped position, I suddenly notice that the soil is dotted with zillions of tiny green things.
Now I like to plant in multiples, but I'm afraid I have had neither the money nor the energy to plant a zillion of anything. Still, plants have been known to seed themselves about rather prolifically. I did scatter a liberal quantity of foxglove seeds there last summer, and also allowed those few that had already established themselves to propagate at will. So these green things might be foxgloves.
On the other hand, they might be weeds.
Ever since I began to garden I have fervently wished that someone would publish a book showing what things looked like as tiny seedlings so I wouldn't ruthlessly eliminate the good guys while ignorantly leaving the bad. I have yet to find such an invaluable document. Have you? Because if not, we are somewhat on our own here - although we may be able to help each other out.
My normal solution when I am unsure is to wait. As things grow they start to take on recognizable characteristics - at least some of the time. So I can wait til the green things have a recognizable look, and THEN wade in, hoe in hand, to eliminate the enemy. I just can't wait too long to do it, as the bigger a weed gets the harder it is to get rid of and the more likely it is to be strangling the more polite (and more desirable) plants.
But plants also do a lot of growing in winter - so some of my mysteries are past the seedling stage and STILL not recognizable. That's when I take their mug shot and post it here in hopes that someone else will know what it is. I invite you to do the same. Maybe some of your mysteries are known to me - or vice versa. In fact - if you have green stuff in need of identification, post it in the discussion area here - or e-mail it to me for posting - mailto:carolwallace@suite101.com I don't promise that we can help - but we can try. Sometimes we get lucky.
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