So many sad plant symptoms...so few diagnostic tools

If only they could talk.

We bought a coreopsis at Annie's over a month ago along with some other drought-hardy annuals. The coreopsis has grown vigorously and is now about 3 feet tall with flower buds at the ends of many top branches. All of a sudden it has been losing its lowest branches. It's quite woody and the branches at the bottom are also fairly woody and sturdy and stretch out from the main stalk nearly parallel to the ground and are quite long. The pattern is that a branch goes all wilty without changing color or anything else, then it just falls out of its socket (where it attaches to the main stalk). It's very sad to see. The branches are opposite each other and so far I think it has lost three pairs of opposite branches, the two lowest pairs and the third lowest.

The other plants right next to it are fine. However, the giant mallow (yes, I know it is considered a weed and that it has a humongous tap root, but I think it's pretty) growing across the walkway from the coreopsis also experienced one lower branch drop. It happened before the coreopsis started losing branches, so I didn't pay that much attention at the time. But the mallow is also very woody with very wood sturdy branches. It hasn't lost any more, but I did notice that it's got some kind of thing causing little bumped dots on a lot of the large lower leaves. Pictures of all of it in the next post.

Like in so much of my gardening, I am adopting a wait-and-see attitude, only because I can't figure out anything else to do.

This is also my attitude about a number of weeds/volunteers coming up around the yard. If I don't recognize 'em, I let 'em grow so I can see what they turn out to be. I was letting a bunch of something grow that I thought was calendula but now that the buds are close to opening I no longer think so. Oh well.

Other garden notes: The tomatoes are getting so big they have completely outgrown the silly little cages we had put up with they were wee. Justin improvised some new cages from the fencing I took down a couple of weeks ago. They look like they'll work, but we didn't have enough fencing for all of them.

I tore out the rue after realizing that was what had caused a bad rash on Justin's arms. I also cut down most of the luxury snail accommodations a.k.a. calla lily patch, and spread worm castings under several of the fruit trees.

So much to learn and do! I'm excited to have more time to do it starting Monday.