As Wallace Stevens reminds us in his poetry, sometimes it’s necessary to scrape the garden clean and begin over.

Indeed.

This is pretty gross.

We see the remains of what was a lovely little space, but now it’s just overgrown with grass.  The dead tomato vine, the grotesque rose bush that would look at home in the Addams Family garden, the Dill Plant That Ate Newnan in its decay.

Time to start over.  The tomato vine is just trash; the rose bush hasn’t really even been putting out roses; and the DPTAN truly is in the way.  It pained me to do it, but I dug it up.

This was in January.  I then got down and pulled as much grass out of the area as I could.  It was a lot of grass.

This past weekend, I got to work.

All my areas cleared.  If you look at the lower left there, you will see a dill plant.  It volunteered to be there, so it’s on probation.  Otherwise, I have parsley, cilantro, thyme, tarragon, buttercrunch lettuce, romaine lettuce, kale, and spinach.  (Chives, oregano, and sage have survived.)  The vertical trench you see there is for sunflowers.  Now that the DPTAN is gone, I need some height.

Herbs planted.  The lettuces had to wait a day while the ants that had moved into that area fled or died.

Also planted in the front area are butterfly garden flowers (plus the sunflowers), and I have more herbs being delivered in a couple of weeks: angelica, vervain, valerian, catnip, lovage, hyssop, borage.  And of course, when it’s truly warm enough: ALL THE BASIL!!

Some of those are medicinal herbs, not culinary, and some of them are invasive and tall, so they will probably end up over where we took out the privet hedge.  Let them fight it out with the wisteria.

For those who will miss the DPTAN, I do have another offering.  Behold!

The Cardoon That Couldn’t Be Stopped.  (And there are actually two of them.)  This is my weird herb area, separate from my what-normal-people-cook-with garden, and it includes the cardoon, horehound, and lemon verbena.

I’ll keep you posted.