When plants die......

[gina2000]

In the spring, when I head out the door, I usually have to access the damage wrought by winter. It's a heartbreaking exercise because of the way our temperature climbs above and below freezing most of the winter. My plants can get alot of frost damage....and very often my older plants can no longer handle it. They bite the dust.

I mourn those losses. My worst loss was a beloved mountain laurel which has been on the property for years. It slowly was dying....you could see it.....and finally, this winter, it died. Broke my heart.

I lost 2 boxwoods some years ago. Again....to the same cycle of freezing/thawing we get some winters. Just broke my heart.



Do you look at the demise of a plant/shrub as an opportunity or a loss????

 

[December99]

I'm looking at it as an opportunity. We have acquired the shrubs and bushes when we got the house - they were already there. We did alot of pruning and thining of those this past fall. We had this azalea bush that had the most awesome colored pink/redish colored flowers but it was wedged between these two HUGE Wisteria plants. Well, I think it has bitten the dust. I never liked where it was located - wedged between these two bushes - so I'm thinking it's a good thing that it might be gone. But now I have to try and find another place to put an azalea or rhododenrun plant this year!!!

 

[Snowwark]

It doesn't break my heart, but that might be because I don't have any plants that are family "heirlooms" like some of the Buds do, or maybe it means I've become hard hearted in my middle ages.

We did have a huge old black cherry tree when we moved here...what, 17 years ago, I think...oh my, my memory is fading fast, and it was sad when it became rotten and had to be cut down.

I was very disappointed when my Cranesbill Geranium was a no-show last year (thanks to a late frost), but other than that, I try to look upon one plants demise as an opportunity to try something new. I think when you have as little space as I do to garden, that's the best way to approach it.

Did that make any sense at all?

 

[marydmjj]

The only thing I've mourned is dahlia tubers I lost during storage. These were given to me from my in-laws after they had split theirs. That summer my MIL passed away and then I stored them wrong the next winter. Ugh. I was so sad. Thankfully my FIL still had the originals and gave me more the next spring. I just planted them last weekend and check on them every day to see if they are coming up yet. I'm a little nutty when it comes to my dear MIL's dahlias!