Moratorium

W collects music. Music is his passion. Once in a class, the students were asked if they had to choose between losing sight or hearing, what would they choose to keep? The point of the exercise was to demonstrate to the students how important the sense of sight was to most people (even though the sense of smell is the most primitive or basic to our nature). Most people chose to keep the sense of sight, as you can imagine. W did not. He said he would choose to keep his sense of hearing. He plays various percussion instruments. He has an enormous music collection. The music styles vary incredibly, despite being a former punk rocker, from classical music of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, to the jazz of Fourplay to the mbira of Forward Kwenda, from Counting Crows to Count Basie. Scores of CD's (pun intended) from the various genre. He recently decided to convert his CD collection to digital format. It's been months of downloading. He soon realized that his computer didn't have enough memory to store all of it. A few years back, he decided that for every new CD he buys, he has to get rid of one. It has failed miserably. Or rather not-miserably. But he is running out of storage space. We may need to get a couple of bookcases just for the CD collection.

Likewise my plant addiction. This year, he issued a moratorium on my plant purchasing. For every plant that I buy, I have to get rid of one. Or even worse, no new plants at all this year. "Ridikulus!" I cried, casting the spell to banish that Boggart. After all, he didn't adhere to his own rule. But then it began to make sense. I had almost as many plants in pots waiting to go into the ground as I had in the ground. If there is a particularly hot day and I forget to water, there could be dozens of dead plants by the time I get home from work. W comments that this is a way of whittling down the collection, but I'm not happy about it. And the garden is a hodgepodge of elements. So far, I haven't adhered completely to the plant purchasing moratorium, but I haven't done too badly. A couple of Hesperaloe funifera will replace Karl. A couple of Salvia chamaedryoides will replace the rotted Salvia pachyphylla. The Penstemon palmeri and the Penstemon pseudospectabilis have gone (they get too big). In will go some self sown seedlings of Penstemon clutei (smaller, longer bloom season, and similar early season burgundy foliage as the P. pseudospectabilis). P. palmeri is replaced by more S. pachyphylla. The Salvia 'Indigo Spires' finally has a place. Rosemary 'Tuscan Blue' which never bloomed well for me is replaced by the Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii which should tolerate the part-sun space better. I've given away almost everything that I could bear to part with. There's only a dozen or so pots left, mostly plants that will need to come in for the winter. I've even whittled down the orchid collection to two windowsills (gasp!). Today I finally found a spot for the Echinocereus baileyi although it doesn't have the impact that I wanted from the color of Echinocereus rigidissimus spines echoing the colors of the Apache plume. But it's okay.

W has commented that the front yard looks more like a design now, and less like a collection. There is less for me to worry about when I leave for work in the morning. Overall, it does look more like a garden and less like a collection. Hmm, now I have room to put a couple more things in pots. The madness is hard to stop.