NOT MY FAVORITES

           Today I’m writing about a couple of things…plants…that are not my favorites

There are alliums and there are alliums. I’ve always loved those huge ones that look like big purple balls while blooming and then look sort of stiff balls of stars when the blooms die off. What I don’t like, in fact, what I absolutely hate are the little tiny alliums. It’s been decades since I first ordered those bulbs. The fact they sent me ten or twenty for almost nothing, or maybe even free, should have been a clue, but I was a new gardener then and had no idea that each of those bulbs would produce what seems like thousands of other little bulbs.

          It was either last year or the year before, but I think last year, I decided I was going to sit there and sift those damn things out of the dirt so they wouldn’t come up the following year. I have no idea how much time I spent doing this, but a lot. I ended up with enough of those things to fill a three-pound coffee can. I didn’t throw them away, but buried them in another location where if they grow and reproduce, I simply won’t care. I just checked that area and there are a few spindly shoots, but it's apparent not every single one of those bulbs survived which makes me wonder…

          how does the garden look this spring with all those pesky bulbs gone? Like I didn’t spend any time at all cleaning them out last year. If anything, there are even more than before although the new growth has skinny stems as opposed to thicker ones. I’m also not sure they’ll produce any blooms this year which will be just fine. Apparently, missing even a tiny bulb the size of a grain of sand doesn’t eliminate those little alliums from your garden. Which makes me wonder why that pile of much larger bulbs I stuffed in the ground has barely produced anything.

          So far, I’ve either pulled the leaves/stems out of the ground or cut them off. They’re preventing plants I want to grow from growing. Perhaps doing this will kill them off…at least I can hope.

         Another plant that is problematic is the bluebell. I swear the moles must move the bulbs from place to place. I also swear that every single blossom produces a seed which then falls to the ground and produces another plant the following spring. As far as my memory goes, I do not remember ever purchasing these bulbs, receiving them as a gift or planting them in my yard. 

And, okay, unlike those little alliums, they do produce a beautiful stalk of blue blossoms, and sometimes even pink or white, but after that, nothing very lovely at all. Over the years, I’ve pulled them out here and there, but it’s almost a waste of time. Like the alliums, there always seems to be something left behind to spring up the following year.

I've lived in this house for fifty-five years and gardened more or less seriously for at least forty-five of those years. My garden has gone through various stages from being a huge vegetable garden in my hippy days to lots of lilies in the past few years. What I'd love is to hire a landscape architect and have both the front and back gardens totally redone. Of course, that's not in the budget and never has been, so I'll just keep mucking about on my own. It's not the perfect garden I've always envisioned, but its  mine and does bring me lots of enjoyment. I even enjoy yanking those alliums and bluebells out of the ground.