The Bad & The Ugly

Okay, let's get this over with. Carol at May Dreams Gardens posted The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly about her gardens as a result of a challenge issued by Colleen at In The Garden Online. I'm one of the perfectionists that she talks about, but you'd never know it, looking at some of the areas of our yard.

I tell myself this will be cathartic. It will be motivating to actually do something about these problem areas. It will be humbling. So I'm not perfect. I actually am very well aware of this and am becoming more comfortable with my imperfect self every day.

So here goes...

What's wrong with this picture? Let me tell you. The hose is in its usual position these days - it seems it never gets properly put away. The shrubs need trimming. The daisies are drooping and are hacked off because they were done blooming and I didn't want to take the time to cut them in an attractive manner. I don't even care if there were small new flower buds. I couldn't care less at this point if they bloom again. And if you look closely, there's still remnants of what I cut off laying in the grass. The grass actually has a hint of green here, due to previous watering of the daisies.

Behind the daisies are sickly cosmos seedlings that never stood a chance. In the spring, it seemed like a good idea to plant the seeds there, but I didn't stop to think that the daisies would get too tall too fast and would shade the cosmos before it could get taller than the daisies. Timing is everything.

Oh, and that satellite dish? We haven't had DirecTV for over two years now.

This lovely little area needs more help than I have energy to give it right now. It was planted last year with the Ostrich Fern that you see there now. There was beautiful 'McKana Giants' columbine in front of that, along with Chameleon Plant all the way to the front. In the spring, 'Avalon' daffodils filled the front half. Everything was timed just perfectly this time.

This year, the Ostrich Fern is half its normal height, due to the drought I'm sure. The columbine never showed its lovely face again. A fraction of the Chameleon Plants returned. The daffodils were just 'okay'. I had some caladium bulbs left over from the other areas where I'd planted them, so I put them in the ground in front of the Ostrich Fern. And they don't like it much here either.

In the two pots on the bench, there's one dead something and another struggling something else. I need to just empty them and get them out of there.

I had such visions of this being a sweet, lovely little niche in between the arborvitaes (which I also hate), but as you can see, that just didn't materialize.


Now here we have leftover wintersown containers yet to be planted. Well, half of them need to be planted. Two of them are growing weeds. The other black tray holds sedum that I ripped out of Max's Garden, intending to use it in my turtle topiary form, which is sitting on the patio naked.

The brugmansias in the pots were meant to be taken out of their pots and planted in the ground somewhere for the summer, but I never got to it, save for one. Usually they look very wilted because they dry out quickly and I forget about watering them as much as they'd like. A couple of them have spider mites and one is being eaten by who-knows-what. I started them inside over the winter and they looked so wonderful under lights in my basement. Out here, they're at the mercy of the scorching heat and the bugs and my forgetfulness.

The clematis ('Niobe') that you see to the left is not in the best location. This is its third summer here and while this was the best yet for growth and bloom, it should be way bigger than it is, but it's in mostly shade all day. No, I don't have plans to move it either.


I saved the 'best' for last. This is the area behind our pool house. I hate it. HATE IT. Romie says no one else sees it. Yes, they do. You have to pass this area on the way to Max's Garden and the fire pit. And besides, I don't like how it looks either. The barrels really have nowhere else to go - one has rainwater, one has kindling wood, and two have mulch. But the pool filter could be enclosed. The wheelbarrow usually is in the building, but I've been using it.

Just out of the frame, to the right, is a cement circle around a crabapple tree. This tree puts up suckers and it loses yellow leaves much of the summer, so it always has an unkempt look to it. We used Sucker Stopper last summer, but we couldn't keep up with all the suckers and we just gave up.

The back of the building is green. That's the color it used to be before we re-sided our house with vinyl siding. At that time, we repainted the pool house gray to match the house. But we ran out of wood stain and never got around to finishing it. I'm not even going to say how long ago that was.

So there you have it. The Bad and The Ugly. For The Good, you can see that in the rest of the blog posts. Please forgive me for pushing the time back on the posting of this entry. I didn't want this one to be the first thing people saw when they came to my site. It would have been Just. Too. Much.