My gardening friend, Dr. Mooks, dropped by for a visit last week. I don’t expect visitors to bring gifts, but I always appreciate when they do. Sometimes my guests bring wine (for me), chocolate (for my assistants), or cat toys and catnip (for Miss Kitty). Dr. Mooks is my only friend who brings gifts for my worms, in this case, a big container of ground eggshells.

As we were walking around the garden, Dr. Mooks commented that she thought I was very brave to have planted mint in one of my garden boxes, as it is very invasive and can easily spread. At present I have four types of mint: spearmint, peppermint and chocolate mint in the garden box, and regular mint growing in the lawn.

Later,I thought about what she said and then dug up the plants and put them into the large pot pictured above. Although the peppermint in the garden box had a defined root ball, both the chocolate mint and spearmint had already started to spread throughout the box. I dug up some of the regular mint from the back of the yard and put all four plants into the pot. Time will tell which of these plants will out-compete the others; my bets are on the spearmint and the chocolate mint.