Having finally identified the enormous mystery plants in my corner bed, it was time for them to meet their fate. Late Sunday afternoon I started ripping them out. It turns out there were close to ten of the things growing in the little nightshade jungle I had going there. I intended to take out all of them, but when I came to the last (and largest) one I stood back and considered it for a while. With some open space around it I could see that it had developed a fairly thick, short trunk that branched out rather gracefully. If I yanked it the corner was going to be really bare. In the end, I gave it a reprieve.
While I was at it, I ended up ripping out the nasturtiums too. I do this a lot with nasturtiums and I've come think of it as normal. I like nasturtiums but I find that just at the time they fill out and bloom heavily, they also manage to look scraggily at the same time. I started out just cutting them back, but I got a little carried away and they all found their way into the green recycling bin. There were many seeds left behind so I know they'll come back and that's fine with me.
Today I completed the clean-up. The bed is now completely weeded for the first time this year. And Linus the cat, who has lost his little jungle hang-out, is not happy. This is what the bed looks like now:
What's left there now are (from left to right): an amaryllis, a calla, three primroses, the nightshade shrub/tree, a wild geranium, a cigar plant (Cuphea ignea), a lilac (which will be moved to a sunnier spot in the winter), a Phygelius macrophylla, and some lobelia that has sprung up at the base of a rose. Obviously, I need some taller plants in the back, so I bought some amaranth seeds (Love Lies Bleeding) to plant there and I'm going to try some pole beans up along the fence. I plan to transplant a couple of nicotiana and some dianthus that I have in pots into the middle part of the bed. But I'm getting ahead of myself--that's Part Two of the makeover.
I'm still craving more color in the front yard, so today I planted a few Whirlybird nasturtium seeds. I really like nasturtiums for their bright color, their re-seeding ability, and their generally easy maintenance. What I don't like about them is that they often end up looking scraggily, with long shoots going off in all directions. This variety, however, is supposed to stay in compact mounds. We'll see.
