arborvitae babies

When you're on a tight budget and want to grow things, make do with the plant material you have! At least, I do. For the past two years I've been discovering these tiny prickly plantlets coming up in my front beds.

I used to yank them out. Then I figured they were some kind of evergreen (which my yard sorely lacks, in the winter it's nearly all barren branches) so I dug a few up and moved them to a more sheltered spot, to see what they'd do. They grew into this:

Now I've been looking at the neighbor's plants and realized these are probably some kind of arborvitae. My neighbor has them hedging all around her yard, and in the spring they make tiny little clusters of buds. I bet the seeds are somehow spreading to my yard. These two bigger ones are only in their second year; they grow quick! I want to make a hedge of them myself across the rear of the back yard, so now I've dug up seven more tiny seedlings, moved into the spot where they can grow some before I transplant them into their final place (who knows how many years that will be?)