I have a lot of what I think are wild geraniums in my yard. I usually pull 'em up, because they kinda spread out in the lawn and have little bitty pale pink flowers when they do bloom. But I couldn't keep up with them in my garden patches this year -- which turned out to be very fortunate. One of the little buggers produced the most beautiful bright, deep purple flowers and grew to be about 2 feet tall.   Now I'm set on harvesting the seeds from that one to see if I can get more of them next year. The temperature has been in the low 30s the last couple of nights here in Portland, and that plant is still going strong.

And there's another weed that I regularly pull up which seems to be a distant relative of celosia, but with small green flower clusters -- not much of a "color spot." But this year when the seedlings were young, I noticed that several of them were kinda reddish instead of green. (Initially I mistook them for my purple basil, but I soon could tell the difference.) I pulled a couple up and then thought, "Hmmm. Let's see what they turn into." So I let a couple of others grow. They grew into what does, indeed, seem closely related to celosia, with deep red, luxuriant flower clusters (that look bushy like celosia). I can just imagine a border consisting of a bunch of these. So I'm collecing those seeds, too.

And among the "weeds" that grow profusely in my yard and garden are columbine, a beautiful purple hosta, and wild phlox (that smell really sweet), in addition to that "butterfly bush" that is taking over the state, and, of course, the morning glory and Himalayan blackberry.

My wild yarrow looks so neat in the lawn that I'm tyring to get it to take over the whole yard.

One neat thing about the "weeds" is that a little drought or cold doesn't do them in the way it may the plants I've planted.

Genie