The Dreadful Truth

If you like watching television offerings like  "The Jerry Springer Show" or "Hoarders", or simply can't look away when passing a car accident,  you'll most likely enjoy this post.  In the same way you  recoil in horror and wonder to yourself, "how did this happen and what kind of people would actually share this sort of thing?" when watching those shows, the same sort of visceral revulsion may be experienced when looking at the following images.  Don't say I didn't warn you!

 

 

The good news is that it's warm enough outside now to move the begonias out.  In fact, some are already out there.  This is the counter in our  butler's pantry.  There is now some space showing .

And a counter top in the kitchen near the windows.  Now we have a little more space as the begonias that were further along were moved outside.  We are so thankful to now have a 12 inch square of counter top!  The kalanchoe beharensis came home as a houseplant but is now outside as well.  I need some space to pot up all of those begonia luxurians cuttings as they have roots growing on them. (probably the glass room or even outside would work!   I cut back my plant and can't bear to throw anything away!

Another piece of good news is that all of the plants stored in the dark cool basement for the winter have finished their annual migration outside.

 

 

So, why aren't things moving faster, you may ask.  Well because there are plants sitting in just about every available space outside, in the glass room, etc.  Here's a view of a chair on the back porch.

Part of the side porch where the agaves spent the winter out of the rain.  The boxes came from various plant hunting trips.

The poor unfinished and sad looking glass room where some plants that needed a little more shelter and a tiny bit of heat spent the winter is still full.

Where in the garden were all of these plants last summer?

Why aren't they moving outside?

Because someone has spent way too much time finding fabulous plants to play with and far too little time working in his garden.

Somewhere in this jumble are evergreens that took the place of the brugmansias when they came in for the winter.  Now , where was it that I put those in the summer? 

Something weird is going on with a huge Hosta 'Sum and Substance'  behind the buddha head.  The hosta is usually fairly big by this time of the year, nearly obscures the buddha head, and covers the ugly white rim of the pot on the right.  Also somewhere under all of these plants is a bench.

Huge cacophony of pots.  Sort of like a tornado hit a nursery and threw some choice offerings in my back yard.

Why aren't more of these things in the ground?  Because someone has neglected his garden.  Under all of the Spanish bluebells and Valerian, both of which I thought I eliminated a few years back, is some space.  The buttercups were successfully removed but when they were there, the combination of blue and yellow was quite nice. Weedy but nice.

There is a path under the forget me nots.  Really there is.

I don't even try in this area any more.  Once the Spanish bluebells are finished blooming I rip the whoe business up and dig in pots of things that wintered inside.

Kerria japonica in the background is threatening to take over the world and is currently covering lots of interesting plants just waiting to be rescued.   The big pot contains Agave weberi, the saga of which you can read here.  Now that the agave is a smaller spiky thing, I'm considering planting pelargoniums with a red splotch on their leaves around it.  The red would go nicely with the blue of the agave but I'm not entirely sure what to do here.  How about a bunch of sempervivums which could be pulled  when the agave becomes huge again?  What would you do?  Pay no attention to all of the forget-me-nots and weeds growing between the pavers. 

This area is too awful for words.   What's worse is that I forgot to take a picture of the most heinous part of my garden.

So there you have it, a cautionary tale of what can happen if you spend too much time playing and blogging and not enough time with your hands in the dirt.  Lest you feel the need to call in the garden abuse  authrorities or stage an intervention, you should know that I spent the better part of the weekend past rectifying the most egregious of these sins but there is still a great deal to do before my garden looks it's best.  This happens once a year on July 15th at dusk and lasts for 15 minutes, the rest of the time the place is a mess.  

Doesn't that make you feel much better about your garden?!