...less than beautiful moments...

There have been a lot of pretty rose shots here recently... it's a morning ritual of mine (perhaps shared by gardeners everywhere)-- to stroll around the garden in the morning, coffee in hand, looking for the latest thing to put out its first blossom of the season. And of course now, having this blog, it's a stroll with camera in hand. (It's been really fun to watch spring ripple across the country through garden blogs-- check out Garden Voices on GardenWeb for a selection of daily highlights.)
But a little while back there was a trend towards showing some of your less than perfect garden moments, and this photo will serve to represent many such corners of the garden I might have chosen. There are moments of pure bliss--lots of them!!-- in the garden right now. But pockets of loss and disappointment too; we lost 5 vines to the frost, (hardenbergias & pink jasmines)--valued for covering those ugly fences, and views of neighbor's blue-tarped trailers. Also: three big mallow bushes (which may have come back, but got moved along, in favor of something hopefully more resilient). At LEAST 2 good-sized lavender bushes-- and four more straggle on 'under observation.' 2 red 'Hop' bushes. My favorite rose bush. Those foxgloves I liked so much. And now, it seems, 2 trees, Chinese Pistache, and Crimson Cloud Hawthorn-- to either: fireblight, or verticilium wilt. And a tree is a more painful loss. .. those Hawthorns are in bloom all over the area right now, and they are old-fashioned-looking (can a tree be old-fashioned?) beauties.

It's all part of the process, I know-- we're still pretty new gardeners, learning from trial and error and research and advice-- and a dead plant is an opportunity for a NEW plant, right? Still it seems only fair to share a little bit of the pain along with the beauty, no?