One of my New Year’s resolutions was to be less boring. Not an easy thing to do for someone like me, but, in the garden, I can at least fake it. I just took the shovel to an area in the North Border that was nothing but old-fashioned roses and irises. It was interesting for about ten days a year, and the rest of the time, just served as a reproach to my lack of imagination.

The partially cleaned-out area (I left some asters so I would have something to look at later this year) looks full of promise. Just like you see in magazines.

Likewise the soil. (Move over, Victory Garden.)

The North Border is bounded by a hedge of mature New Mexican privets, or desert olives (Forestiera neomexicana) which no doubt suck all the water out of the soil, but I like them a lot.

In other news, while I was well aware that the handsome cage of rebar and rabbit wire I made for a clematis was supporting a healthy growth of bindweed (keeps the sun off the clematis on hot days), I was completely unaware that a plant of prickly lettuce was growing in the cage, flowering at about five feet tall.

Naturally I gave the thing a tug, and the clematis was pulled to pieces, but at least the top of the prickly lettuce is dead. (Hanging down in defeat, on the right side of the cage.)