Pride of Madeira gets whacked

Today Matt and I went to the hardware store and bought the rest of the components for the composter lid. Redwood lumber, handles, hinges, hasps, screws and so on.

We got to the garden and Matt started assembling the lids. Well, tried too - a mismeasurement means we need to get more lumber tomorrow. It took quite a while to figure that out.

In the meantime I set up sprinklers to water the brights bed and dismantled the variegated Echium candicans "Pride of Madeira." Yep, also known as "Pride of Matt" this once stunning plant grew high on the hog, becoming so heavy-branched that sections of it would regularly split off and die. Well its swan song was today - almost all the branches had split and I was just sick of watching it die so I hacked it to death and got it over with. Took about 15 minutes to saw it all apart.

What took a lot longer was getting all the branches put away - there's not much room on the old compost heap so I cut down the branches and used them to edge part of the left bed. A couple hours later and the middle back bed is looking quite bare... I think this calls for some excellent Agaves, Aloes and so on!


In other news I deadheaded the Rudbeckias, Amaryllis belladonnas, Achilleas and a few other things.