Gratuitous Domestic Posting (TM) - Outdoor Division

I believe I have officially hit that tipping point in the season where I lose control of the yard and garden. It's too bloody hot most of the time to put in much work, the number of things that are sprouting where they shouldn't increases exponentially and the number of things that need to be done to keep what should be there healthy just gets overwhelming. To hell with the whitefly and Japanese beetles! Stuff the false-strawberry invading the lawn! Bugger all the dead branches that need to be pruned! If I can just keep the lawn routinely cut for the next five weeks or so, that'll be good enough for now.

I am also paying for earlier lapses. Pruning has always been my weak spot as a gardener. For most of the perennials, this isn't really that much of a problem, and I have always liked the rather dishevelled look it produces. But in some cases, my slacking has had detrimental results. This year, I neglected to cut back the Joe Pye Weed in late spring as I had ought to have done, and now the damned stuff is 9 feet tall instead of 5 and is far too big for my little plot.

But there's always a silver lining - as I was brooding on this matter yesterday, staring out at the garden, I had a sudden epiphany about how I could transplant the JPW and thereby improve the balance of the beds out of all knowledge. It's going to involve an awful lot of moving things about this fall, but I think the results will be terrific.