When Meeko and I go on our neighbourhood walks, I spend a lot of time looking at other people's gardens. I often notice tidy clumps of black-eyed susans maybe two or three feet in height.
When I was a little girl, I loved black-eyed susans. Black-eyed susans, cow vetch, asters, wild daisies and queen anne's lace would often end up in bouquets gathered on walks through the little ravine not far from my childhood house.
I think you would all admit that black-eyed susans are a very happy looking flower. It's really quite hard to be mad at them. But I am.
You see there's a gang of black-eyed susans that have decided to take over one end of my garden. They are actually the flowerbeds that belong to Emma and Chloé. Neither of them really took care of their garden plots this year and I refused to do it for them. The black-eyed susans figured that no one was looking and moved in, but not in a polite and delicate way. These black-eyed susans have filled out every inch of the beds and have grown to a crazy height. They are taller than me!
I asked a local model if he would mind posing in front of them to give you a sense of scale.
Somewhere in behind that adorable model (thank you Meeko) and those towering yellow hooligans are pink phlox, obedient plant and a few other plants I haven't seen in so long I've forgotten what they are.
It's clear that these black-eyed susans have world domination in mind and I'm going to have to take them out but, you know what? I'm going to wait until they've finished blooming. I don't admire their thug-like behaviour but I've got to admit that they're pretty in a vase.
And they even came in handy as a photo prop alongside an original
watercolor I just listed on Etsy.
So I guess if they are using part of my garden rent-free, I'll take advantage of having them. Bouquet of black-eyed susans, anyone?
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A bit of research has determined that the flowers that have taken over my garden are probably brown-eyed susans rather than black-eyed susans although they are closely related. Brown-eyed susans tend to have smaller flowers not to mention rude behaviour. ;)
