These days, I cast the balcony garden evil, sidelong glances. I'm like this every year at around this time - I lose interest. I grow hostile. The lush, glorious jungle of May and June is looking a bit weedy and lackluster. The big producers have already faded, leaving a collection of leggy, ungainly stems.
Instead of coaxing and nurturing as I did all spring, I have become merciless. I rip out the underachievers. The dahlias are the first to go - five plants painstakenly grown from tubers and only one blossom all summer. One died early, a bad omen. The others sucked up water and looked promising, while producing nothing. Dahlias, I hiss. You are here for my amusement and you have failed to amuse me. Now you must die.
The white cypress vine gets no love either. Its stringy, yellowing leaves create the same effect as a ragged dish mop left out in the rain. Not soothing. Not John Singer Sargent summer tea party in the garden AT ALL. White cypress, YOU FAIL.
Blue hydrangeas: You get a stay of execution, but only because you were so nice last year. I don't know what your problem is BH, but you are skating on thin ice and I don't like it ONE. BIT. Don't MAKE me stop the car, blue hydrangeas.
If only you could all be like the tuberous begonias. The TBs are champs. Or the moonflowers - the MFs are stars. Even the new roses - the BARE ROOT roses that were like PATHETIC LITTLE STICKS when I bought them are better than your sorry asses.
Time to shape up, scrubs. Otherwise it's SNIPPITY-SNIP-RIP-RIP.
Photograph via Keep Your Pebbles.