Garden Show-Offs

These Black-Eyed Susans are doing their best to resemble a fireworks display.

All the early summer flowers have bloomed and are spent, causing a lot of clean-up work. Seed collecting has started, although my pride at being able to produce free flowers from seeds and divisions is now being tested by the wish for a new look next year.

We have a lot of volunteer sunflowers, some of which have grown in odd spots. Next season I plan to be less lenient with plants that decide where they want to grow, even if they are too tall for the location. They will be summarily transplanted to a location of my choice or just be pulled up and discarded like the weeds they are.

A weed, as gardeners will tell you, is any plant that grows in the wrong place. Pigweed, mugwort, carpetweed and field garlic are always on the most wanted list of garden outlaws, but even Black-Eyed Susans and sunflowers may be shown the garden gate when they behave like weeds and just pop up anywhere.

--Bernice Paglia