I need your 100% honest opinion below.
If you’ve visited here before and know me even slightly, I struggle with my OCD tendencies and need for control when it comes to gardening. While I enjoy and even prefer others wild and bold and out of control gardens, it takes a lot for me to create that same vibe in my own garden. I’m getting better, but I still fight the need for order and tamed plants.
And if I could play amateur psychologist for a moment, this personal need for control but a love for the more “out of control” extends to my “real” life. I find myself attracted to those people who are more outspoken, have a louder personality and aren’t afraid to say what they feel. They are an outlet for me to live vicariously through them. I’m jealous of their fearlessness.
So are our gardening lives a true reflection of our real lives? Or can we use gardening as an outlet to explore a different part of our personalities? Me thinks this is something I’ve been working through for years now, even if I wasn’t conscious of it most of the time. There is a much deeper discussion to be had here at a another time. I just need some more time to mull it over. Because the same parallel can be drawn with writing.
Moving on.
So as I was touring the garden this morning, I came upon this bit of “wildness” (relative term of course).
It took all I could handle to allow the white and purple coneflowers to coexist previously, but I could justify it since they were of the same genus. But now things are getting all sorts of wacky with that random Phlox ‘David’ appearing out of nowhere (not really “out of nowhere”, I know how it found its way there. I’m smart.) I so want to pull it out to restore order in the garden and more importantly, in my troubled cranium. Proudly, I managed to hold off so we could discuss together.
Progress.
So what would you do? Are any of you as insane as me? Do you stare whimsy in the face and say “not in my house” or are you a normal human being who appreciates such fun and random and fascinating garden happenings?
Please tell me I’m not alone.
Pull it.
But I would take it as a free gift to be relocated elsewhere. Then I’d obsess about where to put it, walking back and forth and frowning at this place and that. Then I’d move it. Then I’d move it again.
Stupid free gifts.
Thank you Kate for letting me know I’m not alone. Ha!
Serendipity. Kind of like the softer curlier look except unbalanced. Probably would try to add more david next year for balance.
Btw is it green jewel at the botom?
It isn’t Green Jewel at the bottom although I wish it was, one of my favorites. I have ‘David’ in another area of the garden and it will be relocated there soon. Thanks for stopping by!
I would have pulled that thing with out a second thought. Of course then I would have stuck it in a vase and enjoyed it inside the house. Can’t let garden goodness go to waste.
Perfect justification! Maybe that is the answer to my obsessiveness … Hmm …
I would dig up the plant and relocate it to where you think it would fit. No sense letting a perfectly good plant go to waste. 🙂
Thank you Sharon, this is the most likely outcome.
I vote for the pull it and relocate it approach. Remember a weed is just a plant growing where it’s not wanted
Amen Jane!
OK, since you admire outspokenness , I think I’ll let loose! Good lord, from the title of the post, I thought a gargantuan weed with some redeeming architectural interest was going to be the subject of the conundrum “to pull or not to pull”. Since it’s just a sweet ‘David’ phlox, I’d say combine two of the suggestions already given…cut the bloom for indoors (hopefully, its departure will quiet the ocd) and relocate the plant come fall. And, actually, I think a number of us gardeners would be thrown off our stride to suddenly notice an uninvited newcomer in amongst a deliberate grouping of plants.
And you nailed the solution Michaele! That is the plan. And more and more, I’m feeling like I’m not alone. Woo hoo!
I recently had to move 3 pink begonias that showed up in a flat that was supposed to be all white. I feel so much better:)
Yes, yes, yes!!! We’re all nuts, love it!
I don’t mind if a plant “volunteers” in an empty space. If a plant “bullies” its way into another plants territory it will be ousted, and in this case end up as a cut flower.
I like that rule. I’m basing my decision solely on aesthetics and that is why I’m nuts.
I would pull it. But that’s because 1. Phlox have become weeds in my gardens and 2. the deer won’t leave them alone. So I have been banishing them all the time, but they keep popping up all over. Since we’ve had negligible rainfall since mid-May, I don’t think I’m going to have much left to tend by fall.
This one is hidden from the deer but you’re right, they can become weed-like.