The Tyranny of the Large Plant

I've planted my garden so bass-ackwards.  Fortunately, I fully and truly believe that if a shovel can get it out of the ground, anything can be moved, and it will survive and do even better this time.  I'm like the Liz Taylor of gardeners.  

But at this point, my beautiful ohai ali'i (Caesalpinia pulcherrima) just won't be.  I love this plant.  It's been moved so often, and look at it.

Isn't it beautiful?  Look at the shape of its branches, and it's always a dependable flower-er.  But having put it where it is (actually, not true - it was somewhere much more wonderful, but the Phyllostachys nigra crowded it out), its current location has kind of massively effed up the whole garden design.

So, too, have the criniums.

Note the seed bulb

Close up of seeds of the crinium - ALL OF THEM WILL GERMINATE

Hiding behind the equally huge kava (Piper methysticum) 

All border plans very sensibly point out the benefits of the tall, medium, short arrangement.  So where are my big plants - the ones that should be functioning as anchors?  In the middle-front.

But don't I kind of owe the plant for becoming, well, a fully mature plant?  And the ohai is not going to survive the transplant unless I bring in a backhoe to dig it out, and with the grade in my yard, that's not going to happen.  OK, even if my yard were flat, it wouldn't happen.  And these plants kind of deserve to live given all of my neglect, so . . . so I'm kind of being held hostage by a bunch of plant thugs.

At what point does a gardener decide to cut her losses?  At what point does a gardener decide it's time to change horses - even if it's in mid-stream?  At what point does holding on to what is good, but not what you want, cost you more in the long run?

I've put 6 years into this garden.  Sometimes I feel that if only I had chosen differently.  If only I had thought things out more.  If only I had known.  Things would be better/more beautiful/perfect.  If only.

Change and growth

On the plus side, the garden looks kind of good right now.  At like 18:17 on 2 July 2011.  RIGHT NOW.

Had some epiphanies over the last two days of gardening craziness.  1) What I want, I can't have.  There is no such thing as maintenance free.  Was not emotionally prepared to accept/understand this until now.  2) This yard is too big for me to maintain as currently envisioned.  I think that some kind of systemic poison is the answer.  3) Slave labor gets stuff done.  4)  I love putting plants in the ground SO MUCH that moving around the same plant 6 times in a day is pretty reasonable and fun.

This was the side garden last year:

Hogwire - how quaint, how naive.

I was pretty proud of how this looked last year.  But the rubbish that the bamboo was throwing down was just out of control.  The Bromeliads were just not right for the site.  So now it looks like this:

Things are a little bigger, a little more to the left.

 Things change.  I always forget that.  A year just flew by; children grew up, plants got taller, things died, new things sprouted.  Tuck was right, change, growth, decay - it's how it's supposed to be.