Here it is, a couple days after Christmas, and I can see that I’m going to have a bumper crop of forget-me-nots among the tulips this spring. The forget-me-nots are annuals that have been self-seeding in my garden for years, and when there are enough of them, they form an attractive foot-tall light blue haze over the front garden bed. Eventually the plants start getting leggy, the foliage loses its luster and I uproot them, always trying to leave a few to drop their seeds for the next year’s display. Sometime during the fall they germinate, and by December they’re about a half inch tall with inch-long leaves, just waiting for winter to be over so they can bloom. 

Also dotting the garden beds are inch-high seedlings of larkspurs, whose purple spikes make such a wonderful counterpoint to roses and catmint. They too are self-sowers whose seedpods ripen to a telltale black in July and August, a clear signal that I can harvest and scatter them at will. Open the pods and check the seeds. If they’re ripe, they’ll be black too.

The advantage of growing self-sowing annuals is that you get flowers on the cheap. The disadvantage is that you never know for sure where your plants are going to come up, and since larkspurs in particular don’t enjoy being transplanted, you basically need to let them choose their spot.

My forget-me-nots and larkspurs have now lived through a couple snow dustings this December and worse is surely to come, but I’m not worried. They’ve done this before. For centuries.

—Carolyn Ulrich