The good, the bad and the ugly

In general I try to stay away from memes, but I couldn't resist this one. Colleen with In the Garden Online invented it. In short I'm going to show those parts of my garden that didn't turn out quite right. You can't always succeed, aned sometimes the most accidental sowing or planting turns into a beautiful flower. This can be good to keep in mind when the yearning for perfection threatens to deaden your entusiasm. So, here they are

The ugly

Waily, waily! This is my calamondin. The branches in the middle are completely dry, it suffers from lack of iron, and dry spots on the leaves hint at another pest or illness. This is my constant reminder that, eventhough I've learned much, I'm still not an expert gardener. A good thing is that oodles of flowers are blooming right now.

The bad

Yes, this is bad. This is my thrips garden. I started spraying it with soft soap sollution regularly, but the soap burnt the leaves. As it is today I don't which damage are made by thrips, and which by soap. Perhaps I tear it all away - except for the tiger nuts, which grows like weeds.

The good

This is a pot full of things I didn't have the heart to throw away. The pansies are former table decorations sinced Easter. Every advice concerning pansies orders me to pick dried out flowers to enhance the flowering and my reaction to this is
"Do I have to?"
The marble leaves are nasturtiums, "Alaska Scarlet". Two plants were left when I had planted everything I needed indoors. I was tired, had overworked myself and was out of time so I just planted them in this bin on the balcony. No acclimatisation period or any other frills, I just put them there.
"If they live, they live!" was my only thought about it.
I hope they have time enough to sprout some flowers. The red will be perfect against the blue pansies.