No room? So soon?

I am afraid it has happened.

I have purchased plants and they need planted.

And. I have… no space for them?

It was bound to happen at some point. But so soon? I have only just begun my garden. (…twenty-eight years ago…)

I am hesitant to share this information around too much. I don’t want word to get out. (…to my Chief Financial Officer…)

It is sad to think that I may never get new plants again. It is sad to think of skipping spring plant sales. It is sad to think of walking right past the pretty plants at the garden center and none following me home.

In all that sadness, I decided I needed to sleep on my conundrum. To give the situation at hand a fresh new look in the morning, in the hopes that perhaps some space might magically open up overnight. (And not via a Vacancy sign popping up on a favorite plant, suddenly stricken overnight by disease or pests!)

And what should happen, but the following morning’s garden stroll revealed… a lightbulb moment…

It isn’t so much that I am “out of space,” rather my garden is full.

Full of winter bulb foliage that needs to die back naturally, in order to feed next year’s blooms.

Full of coneflowers and winecups that I have allowed to reseed and spread and sprawl and ramble about.

Full of daylily foliage, which have been loving our abundant spring rains and growing and doubling in size seemingly overnight.

My garden is equally full of rainlilies and passionvines, both super spreaders in my garden.

Yes. My garden is full.

But the bulb foliage will eventually be cut back and the bulbs will be dug and divided and replanted. The tall bearded irises also desperately need divided and thinned out.

And I really should thin the coneflowers and winecups, but both feed the bees and butterflies that visit my garden. The winecups will finish their bloom cycle soon enough and I will cut back their rambling vines and they will disappear beneath the ground until next spring. The coneflowers may well shrink in numbers, beat down by the summer sun, as is typical in years past.

(Shown below: Texas native winecups, rambling over dwarf Yaupon holly shrub.)

I could stand to pull a few of passionvines that pop up here and there about the garden. But just as I think that, a gulf fritillary butterfly happens by and deposits her eggs and – right before my eyes – nature is complete, right here on my own little piece of Earth that I garden. (Shown in photograph below.)

Am I out of garden space? Perhaps. But for now, I prefer to think that my garden is just bursting out at the seams and jubilantly growing, lush from inches and inches of spring rains.

(Shown below: Coneflower growing outside its flower bed.)

All photographs taken today, May 8th, in my southern Denton County, Texas, garden.