There is no room for smugness. Among those of us who make gardens, we have, if truth be told, more failures and more “unfulfilled expectations” than we have great successes. This truth was made painfully clear to me this past week as my beloved Edgeworthia wilted and expired. This large and old specimen was a key figure in my garden, and I had always enjoyed it and appreciated it. I expected to mourn.

There is no room for sentimentality, either.

Like a widower burying his wife and winking at a girl at the graveside service, I am already thinking of how I can change my place now that the old broad has moved on. I had JUST been in the process of extracting a number of unproductive members from the garden, passing out F’s like my Organic Chemistry professor at UGA, and filling the compost heap with those laggards. 

I had been telling my neighbor Deborah about my house-cleaning project, and my ruthless approach to it and how there is no room for sentimentality in the garden, when she asked me if the Edgeworthia was going. “No way!” was my response. I don’t BELIEVE that I had felt smug about how well the plant had done and what a great specimen it was, but perhaps God felt differently. Two days later it was dead. “Have you considered my servant Job?” came to mind.

Well friends, I share this story with you to save your garden from suffering because of any smug satisfaction that may be crouching at YOUR door, though I expect that you are of higher caliber than I am, and therefore immune to this malady. I also want you to make the best use of your piece of the Earth. Keep trying new things in your gardens, rejecting those underachieving space takers that I see all over town, and giving their place to new students who might just be great.

I am ordering every Penstemon that I can find right NOW to take the Edgeworthia’s place. “Ya gotta move on, son.” I can hear my dad’s voice now. Change is energizing and new plants are inspiring, so the mourning is over and hope is alive.

Plant some new things this Fall, friends.