SoCal has had a few days of warm winds. I love the wind, so I am happy, but most people here dread the “Santa Ana winds.” We had one casualty: a small potted ficus tree blew over and the pot broke.
I read an article about a gardener who advocates not getting too attached to your plants. Rather than nursing the sickly, poor-performers along; she advocated pulling them up immediately and trying something else. She is constantly plugging in new plants in areas that need it and it forces her to try plants she normally would not have tried.
My first thoughts were that this is an expensive idea and it seemed wasteful to throw away a living plant. But as I look around my yard and see the poor-performers, I wonder. It IS very frustrating every time I look at the plants to see the ones that aren’t doing well. Perhaps I would enjoy my yard even more if I just yanked those out and started over.
My daughter worked for Baylor University Maintenance Dept one summer while she was attending summer school. She dragged in a sickly houseplant one day and asked the head gardener what to do with it.
“Give it a Christian burial.” he quipped.