Farewell to the beauteous but guzzler cannas. Behold the defiant rhizomes!

[UTUSN]

Yes, I love nature. Also have a healthy glimmer into its overpowering force, combined with cowardly self survival. At a ground level, so to speak, I'm 79 and getting deep into the downsizing phase of things - final plans made, but ridding of *things* in all manifestations, easing off of frivolous physical effort to optimize it on essential tasks, obviously ridding of material stuff. Never been a specialist deep into foodie-ism, gardening, cars and all such devotions. 30 years ago in my final, permanent shack, went through planting bushes and trees - every half dozen years or so replacing stuff that went bad, raking leaves and barbering down dead branches. First thing to go back then was any growing thing that had thorns on them. But skipping to the chase, narrowing everything down to a near area without trekking and excessive watering.

So the last, near "gardening" (sitting on a bath stool, barely digging planting holes), regarded cannas for their lovely blooms and above waist-high privacy height. Some downsides were known quantities - water guzzling, tips that they spread and are hard to get rid of. Surprise discovery, they seem to have pet, mascot pals in the form of moths who eat up the foliage with nothing lovely left.

A Loungeteer warned back then that getting rid of them is daunting, even digging up the rhizomes not working easily, to which am here testifying and validating. Dug up the whole patch of the rhizomes last week - the "digging" being sitting on a bath stool and implementing only arm action on the shovel. So this week there were a very few new sprouts from rhizomes, and am sure there will be some few to come.

*** So the further downsizing consists of replacing with evergreen shrubs - not water guzzlers, no shedding/raking of leaves. Who knows whether the height will make it for me to witness.

The lovelies (from Google, not mine), gone.


Behold the valient and defiant rhizomes:


The replacement: Evergreen

[Sogo]

1. I love cannas, but in my growing zone, they are not hardy and need to be planted every year. That also means

no problem with rhizomes. (Although other plants that are hardy here have rhizomes, and I swear I won't plant those!)

You must be in a warmer zone.

[UTUSN]

2. I learned something about nurseries and medical clinics.

Back in my employment days, had to travel about every couple of months for meetings, 2-3 days gone. So when my circle wasn't available to dog sit, had to put them up at a veterinary clinic, which went on for awhile, but eventually they told me that such places are "hospitals" with sick animals being housed, which could be bad for my dog. So stopped that. I'm sure most people have the common sense knowledge (not like me) that people hospitals, doctors' offices, nursing homes might be purveyors of contagions.

Didn't make the connection to anything else until a few years ago when some plants that I got from nurseries got infested repeatedly with something/whatever (pests or fungi). It dawned on me that the same principle was involved - that a place (nursery) by definition stocked with multiple specimens might be a cesspool of contamination.

[LudwigPastorius]

3. I always thought they called them cannas because they canna be killed.