Signs You've Neglected the Garden Too Long

Plants try to take things into their own hands.

The spiders start thinking they own the place.

There are trees growing out of the compost pile.

Reviving the Pool Garden

Look at the bananas. "What?" you say. "Didn't Wicked tell us she removed these?" Well, unless you completely remove all of these roots, the buggers will come back. They look pretty now and I almost hate to hack them to death. But hack I will for two simple reasons:

1. More often than not, the bananas look like this: yuck.

2. They are busting through the raised beds. The bastards must go!

I have to admit that I didn't get to all of these plants today. I did remove the other bunch on opposite corner and replaced it with:

BIRD OF PARADISE!!!!!!!

Yes! We have no bananas.

Aren't these New Guinea impatiens yummy? I went to the nursery with a totally different objective in mind, but I couldn't reisist these. They are bit of an exeperiment as I've never planted them before. I'm hoping they will last a bit longer than regular impatiens, which tend to got dormant during the heat of summer.

I added them to the front garden, along with a Philodendron 'Hope' and lime green coleus. The coleus and impatiens were intended for my mother's yard, (more on that in a later post) but the plants created rave reviews from the monster and his son, boys who don't typically care much about plants. So we had to keep them. I'll get some more for Mom tomorrow.

Now for the more depressing part of the day:

Time to get rid of the banana trees. They just look like crap late in the season, and as you can see the white bird of paradise plant has the same effect and stays much nicer.
I am only realizing now, looking at the pictures, how much better this all looks. The dead plants were bothering much more than I realized. Unfortunely, the trunks of these plants were far more difficult to move and they are still there. I tried with all the Freddie Krueger malice I could muster, but no luck. In some parts it is just solid trunk, no room to even dig around. If anyone has any suggestions for removing banana trunks, it would be helpful. Well, if I'm this happy that the bananas are gone, imagine how I'll feel when we fix the pool!

Rainbow

After lots of rain, a rainbow formed over my pool garden this evening.

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable

as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment

of the rainbow which I have clutched. ~ Henry David Thoreau