How do you start adding living mulch to your garden?   One of the simplest ways, is just to look for the spots in your garden that are bare.    Look for the open areas and start there.   Look under your shrubs.   Look along the edges of your beds.   Instead of adding another layer of mulch, add plants.   Think about planting these living mulches in terms of planting families. In other words, planting en masse. This is what the naturalists and ecologists do naturally; They think about plants in terms of population.   New gardeners tend to think of A PLANT and not A PLANTING; so think bigger. Think community. Think about the way you see plants occurring naturally.   Even the weeds tend to show up with their brothers and sisters. If one finds purchase, they send out an Evite. The next thing you know, there’s a family reunion of Canadian Thistle or Creeping Charlie and you get to be the host.   With this in mind, it’s right about this time of year, that I remind myself how much I like the giant allium. And, how I fervently wish I would’ve planted that allium as a member of a very, very, very large extended family; the Everybody Loves Raymond kind of family, because one can never have enough allium.     Brevities #OTD    Today is St. Bernard Tolomeo's Day, the Patron Saint of Olive Growers.    Saint Bernard was from Tuscany and he was born there in 1272.  He was going to be a lawyer, but then he pursued the church after he recovered his eyesight after an illness. He'd made a deal with God.   He chose the name Bernard after the habit of Clairvaux - we mentioned him yesterday - he is the patron saint of bees and beekeepers.   Bernard became the patron Saint of Olives because t he Abbey where Tolomeo lived, St Mary of Olivet, was the site of an olive plantation. The location became known as Mount Olivet.        Here are some here are a few quick fun facts about Olives:   Olives are a fruit and not a vegetable.   The first olive harvest occurs after 15 years of growing. The next time you’re feeling impatient, remember the olive.   Olive trees are some of the oldest live plants on earth. They’re considered evergreens.   One of the oldest all of trees is on the island of Crete is an Olive and it’s estimated to be about 4,000 years old and it is still producing fruit.   Finally, the color of the fruit is completely dependent on the maturity – unripe fruit is green and the ripe is dark purple to black (like tomatoes and peppers).     #OTD    It was on this day that the botanist George Taylor died in 1891. Taylor had immigrated from Scotland at the age of 53. He brought his family to the United States and they settled in Kalamazoo Michigan in 1855. Taylor's brothers were already there, so it was an easy decision.   Once he got settled, George became known as "Celery" after he started growing celery commercially. Kalamazoo had what was called "muckland" which was "valueless for anything other than growing to celery." Once, when a botanist visited the area, he said that the land was black muckland of a peaty nature which is best for celery.   In Kalamazoo, there is a little plaque dedicated to George Celery Taylor.    Thanks to Taylor, Kalamazoo became known as the Celery City or Celeryville   In 1880, the Detroit Free Press shared an article that talked about the celery beds that were growing. It said this:   "Driving north from Kalamazoo, through the country, one passes great 100-acre farms devoted to the sweet-scented celery, reminding one of that Methodist hymn:   'Sweet fields beyond stand dressed in living green.'   One would never forget a drive through the celery gardens in any direction from Kalamazoo; the long rows keeping their bright green till November, as crop follows crop; and the fields being unmarred by fences or anything except the cozy cottages of the thrifty Hollanders."   And there was a fun little article that was posted in The Herald Press out of St Joseph Michigan in 1956. It talked about the early days of celery