Getting out of hand

Sometimes parts of your garden get out of hand. You lose control, whether because of lack of time, bad weather, you've been focusing on other parts of the garden, etc. Whatever the reason, a bed or part of a bed just starts looking terrible.

I seem to have a few of those areas right now, and this is one of them. Time to fix this!

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This area between one of the 'homerun' roses (currently known as "Japanese Beetle Playground") on the right and some daylillies on the left contains:

1. An upside down, broken clay pot
2. A dead grapefruit tree in a clay pot that is full of weeds
3. Another clay pot full of weeds
4. A lot of crabgrass and other grassy weeds
5. Violets

That grapefruit is particularly nasty, as the thorns are harder and sharper than when the plant was alive (or so it seems):

I don't know how many times I've gotten poked by these this year while looking for beetles on the rose. A brisk walk to the compost pile takes care of that problem (why didn't I do this months ago?)

Ten minutes with the scuffle hoe and this area is pretty much ready for some new plants:

I don't know what plants are going in there yet, but as I admire the clean look of the freshly-weeded bed, I smell something stinky... One of the stray cats must have used this area for a little box -- no wait! It's the eryngium that's in the corner of the raised bed:

Ok, this stuff has to go. I just can't take the "fragrance" anymore. Love the look, but the smell and the plant's tendency to flop means that it's no longer for my garden.

The rest of this corner of the raised bed really needs to be cleaned up too. With the eryngium gone, it's just weeds, creeping Jenny, and cypress vine seedlings:

There is at least one desirable coneflower seedling in here and it's hard to see, so I have to be a little careful with my weed pulling.

A few minutes of selective hand-pulling, and that corner is clear now too:

Again I don't know what other plants I'm putting there yet, but I have a couple of ideas... maybe more coneflowers?

The area on the ground is a harder spot to fill, as it has the tall rose on one side, the medium-tall daylillies on the other, and the raised bed behind it. To me it feels like I either need to have some fairly short plants here, or something with some large leaves to provide contrast with the nearby plants.

Maybe I'll stick one of my elephant ears in the ground here?

Not sure yet, but it's nice to have two new empty areas in which to plant. It seems like it's been a while since I've had that luxury.