Never not half-assed

Here’s a post with actual pictures of plants and garden talk, with the prettiest picture I took today for Attention. (I capitalized Attention without thinking about it, but I like it.)

These are the two most half-assed beds you have ever seen. One is the edge of my lawn up against the sidewalk. The other is a bed next to my driveway. Here, in general, in a broader sense is what’s happening in these areas: you know how there are supposedly people who have that effortlessly cool look, like no makeup and bedhead etc, but in reality it doesn’t work that way? Well, I’m trying to make these beds effortlessly cool and just ending up with smudged mascara and weird bumpy hair. That’s my simile. I’ve got wine. Go with it. I’ve been trying to half-ass these areas (surprise!) They have landscape fabric down, which makes planting annuals annoying, and perennials are expensive when you buy them full-size and I cannot get my shit together to start the seeds. So last year I literally just threw some Fleur de Lawn seeds at the sidewalk edge area, and actually it kinda worked! I mean, it doesn’t exactly look “landscaped” but I can see Bellis and Alyssum and some other stuff, and it’s kinda pretty. But it obviously has potential to be nicer. Then the driveway side-bed, yikes. It’s actually kind of hilarious. It has a super tragic Japanese maple that keeps dying back in super funky ways, and also ONE paw-paw, because I guess the other paw-paw died, so why the hell do I have a paw-paw tree that will never fruit in my ornamental bed? (Remember, I rent. I did not do this.) I ripped out some kinnickinick plants last year because they just kept getting infested by aphids. I planted some strawberry starts and they’ve got insane and now cover 1⁄3 of the bed. The rest is basically a truly random assortment of perennials that are self-seeding, mostly columbine, lupine, and oregano. Then last fall I just threw some “Wildflower seeds” that came with my butterfly kit at the ground. So now, stuff is coming up, and I have no idea what is a weed and what is not. In my vision, this looks like one of those beds that sort of replicates a meadow or a prairie, with all the plants interspersed in a beautiful natural way. In reality this whole bed is a shitshow. But! I was living the dream today. The little one did actually let me weed this bed (to the best of my ability as I only pulled out the things that were very clearly weeds) for like a solid hour, as long as I kept up my side of our Octonauts x Super Mario Bros pretend game.