The Salvia From Hell

Yes, rose pruning continues. Today I was up on the ladder trimming 'Altissimo', but spent much more of the day digging out The Salvia From Hell, aka Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue'. This salvia has gorgeous blue flowers on black stems. An internet search will turn up many beautiful photos. This post, however, shows only the ugly parts of the plant. It's a thug, filling the soil with roots plus these lovely, rat-shaped root tubers:



I spent hours today pulling out two trash barrels of roots:


I will also spend hours next January pulling out S. guaranitica 'Black And Blue' roots yet again. I can't have possibly gotten them all--I never do. In a month or two, new sprouts will emerge.

In the tumult that is Spring, I won't see them until I spot the first gorgeous spike of blue flowers. Those blue flowers will be so beautiful, I'll leave them...and then next January that area of the garden will again be stuffed full of horrible roots and tubers. Who says plants are dumb? They are learning they need only produce blue flowers to take over the world.

Though a lot of the garden is but towers of bare prickly sticks, there's some pink and coral here and there. Yucca 'Bright Star', pinks up in the winter, and Euphorbia tirucalli 'Sticks On Fire' turns a brilliant coral and nicely mimics the shape of the bare, pruned roses. Pink and coral look really good to me now. Much better than blue.