A droop or two

Today I take a look at a couple of "drooping" plants that need some attention, and what I did about them. First up, this potted bamboo:

These culms should be pretty much vertical, but they're obviously not. I'd like to blame their arching habit on all of the recent rains, but these have been drooping since they leafed out earlier in the summer. With younger bamboos it's common for the weight of the leaves to bend the too-thin culms over.

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What's my solution? Do nothing. The reason?

A cypress vine volunteer has grown up another potted bamboo and tied both of these plants together, keeping the one plant bent over.

I've pulled lots of cypress vines out of pots, pathway cracks, and planting beds this year, leaving well-positioned ones to grow and flower. Invariably I miss some poorly-sited ones though, and they certainly love using the potted bamboos as trellises.

I may still try to disentangle the drooping bamboo from the vine, but I'd rather just leave it alone and let the hummingbirds have one more thing to fight over. (It's almost constant hummingbird twittering in my yard right now, as they take turns chasing each other away from the different food sources.)

Don't you just love gardening "problems" that require no work? I know I do.


The second issue with drooping is not a do-nothing case though:

I had this same problem last year: the Caryopteris is growing too close to the stairs and would be blocking at least half of the stair width even if it hadn't been flattened by heavy rains this past weekend.

That stem should not be horizontal!

Yes, there is a staircase under there:

What I really want to do is remove these plants from this spot, as I now know that last year wasn't a fluke and these guys are going to be a problem every year.

That is one wet bee!

I don't want to dig them up while they're flowering though, as the bees love this late summer nectar source. I'll relocate them in a month or so, but for now I'll just get them out of the way:

Once those leaves reorient to the sunlight this little hedge will look much nicer, but at least I can use the stairway again, and the blooms are still accessible to the pollinators.

Hmm, one problem whose solution was "do nothing right now", and another whose solution was a temporary tie-up that took 5 minutes. Am I getting lazy? Am I burned out on the garden already this summer?

Nah, let's just say I'm super-efficient when it's very tropical (90ºF and 90% humidity) outside.

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