While blowing the pollen off of my front porch with the leaf blower yesterday, I started to think about summer container gardening. The empty pots that emerged from under the pollen contained the corpses of last years’ container garden. Choking on the yellow dust I began to contemplate the philosophical implications of the garden as living, breathing, growing and dying entity.

Where do plants go when they die? I think that each year the garden plants die and are reincarnated as container gardens on the porches and decks and sitting areas in the garden. More and more containers appear yearly.

I have gardened in every home I have ever lived. It seems that at each residence my garden starts small, confined to outlined beds and designated areas. Eventually the garden creeps out of the flower beds and shrubbery. Slowly the garden covers my home like the “Blob" enveloping a movie theatre. From the native coral bark honeysuckle vine that climbs over the fence to the fragrance of the tea olive wafting in the open window to the containers full of plants in all of my outdoor living spaces, the garden makes its way on to and into my home.

First it starts with the vegetable garden. The first summer finds the edible plants sneaking their way out of the veggie patch and ending up at the base of the stairs in the form of an herb garden. Rosemary, thyme, basil, peppers and oregano fill the voids in the territory newly claimed by the garden. Some of the herbs eventually end up in pots nestled in nooks and crannies around the garden, porches and house in sun or shade depending on the plant species. Akitchen herb garden is born.

Then hanging baskets appear on the front porch. Ferns materialize the second summer we are in a home and large terracotta pots appear in the corners on the floor soon thereafter. The containers end up full of snapdragons, dianthus, coleus, acoris, and creeping jenny among other summer annuals and perennials.

Soon thereafter the back porch containers manifest themselves. Large decorative containers with evergreen trees and shrubs in the center surrounded by flowers seem to form from the ether on the back patio and deck. Some contain 'Sky Pencil' hollies surrounded by acoris and flowering annuals like sun coleus and salvia while others contain native red cedars surrounded by ‘Summer Wave’ petunia s. The filler, thriller and the spiller…isn’t that what the garden writer is supposed to say?

Finally three to five years after inhabiting a domicile, the garden moves indoors in the form of a terrarium moss and fern garden (this ends up home to animals such as snails, lizards and newts) and various potted herbs and indoor plants such as a Christmas cactus . Before you know it, the entire home is on the verge of a botanical take over.