Nature and all it's practical usefulness

When I first started little gardens, about 20 years ago, I started with flowers, herbs and houseplants.  I just relished my time with plants.  But as I got older and busier, I began growing as income and my priorities changed from ornamental to "useful" plants.  That meant I didn't grow anything that couldn't be eaten, used as medicine, or cut as a dried flower. 

Ruby with the bleeding hearts behind her, encroaching the stairs.

 

Now that I am even older, and I get further into permaculture and sustainable organic living, I am realizing that ALL plants are useful in one way or another.  For instance, my porches around my house are abundant in both pink and white varieties of bleeding heart.  In my "useful" plants period, I'd have dug them up to make more room for hydrangeas so they'd be useful as a dried flower.  It may be that I have more space than ever, also.  I have come to enjoy these plants far beyond what I expected.  They are the one of the first flowers in spring in my gardens.  They bring me so much joy.  They are prolific and spread all over the place, giving shade to the toads, and shelter to the beetles, and beauty to the front walkways.

me, a few years ago harvesting hydrangeas

The huge pines that line our driveway are ugly, but robins love them for nesting and all sorts of other birds do too. 

 

The large pines by the drive.  I find a nest or two from these trees every spring. 

 

Hosta, which is simply ornamental, has a place in my garden now for it's benefits in shading large patches of soil so it's more drought tolerant.

 

The point is, it's so much better to live with abundance and abundance in it's usefulness.  It's just better to "get" nature.  Everything that is in nature has a purpose.  You just have to be open to see it.