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In the beginning, what I didn\u2019t know was legion. As irony would have it, the more I\u2019ve learned, the worse it\u2019s gotten. Oh\u00a0I have learned tons, I’ll give you that, but it\u2019s like anything you examine closely, the more you look at it, the more you realize there is to see. But that\u2019s a good thing, right? Where I used to go awry more frequently, is in believing that I have to know it all before I could\u00a0even get started. This is incorrect.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I blame my sweet proud parents. They were always raving about how at age three I could tie my own shoes and knew all the states and capitals. I could work our wooden US puzzle in nothing flat. The curse of parents celebrating your genius when you\u2019re a wee\u00a0seedling. Conundrum\u00a0is, I somehow got the idea if I wasn\u2019t prepared to hit the ground running at expert level, I shouldn\u2019t bother trying. In looking at old pictures, pre-one more kid, I’m thinking the shoe tying business was likely out of necessity–not my personal brilliance.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I believed\u00a0that I needed to know everything about\u00a0gardening before I wore my first pair of good shoes into the dirt. Then I made the discovery that most things planted will grow. I suppose it helps to know more, but sometimes I pine for the days when I didn’t know as much, and ended up with amazing results. Zone Schmone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I once bought a couple ferns in four inch pots, not knowing anything about them, and, of course, didn’t record any details. I planted them outside our kitchen window and they grew to fabulous\u00a0proportion, easily shoulder height. I put\u00a0a Hosta ‘Sum & Substance<\/a>‘ between them, with no idea how big its leaves would grow. The vignette looked fantastic. But alas, after a couple of good seasons, an\u00a0ice storm snatched\u00a0the ferns away. I didn’t photograph plants back then, so I can’t show them to you. But\u00a0Megan had the foresight to snap\u00a0the Hosta. (The photos by her on our\u00a0site\u00a0is my actual plant.)<\/p>\n But back to my theme, after researching the first few thousand plants on our site, I thought I was doing okay in coming to grips with genus. (Not as much confidence on the pronunciation front, though loosening up on that front too. If we can get across what we’re talking about, good enough.) For instance, I now recognize all kinds of disparate Eryngiums as kin.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n