Rampant growth of celosia—my ‘old flame’ and chaotic beauty

The beauty of a garden comes from diversity of colors arranged in an artistic and coherent way by design.  In this sense our garden is a failure this year, thanks to the “rampant” growth of celosia.  I have to parenthesize “rampant” as my “old flames” protested the word rampant is reserved for weeds only; they prefer the word “flourish”.

I am showing you two photos of an exquisite design garden in front of a home of one of our friends.  That is also what we aim, but fail to achieve.

We used a variety of flowers with diverse colors, the likes of petunia, geranium, begonia, salvia, and celosia.  In the late spring we noticed the volunteer celosia began to emerge; we plan to move them around, but never got time to do it soon enough.  Their steady growth in size and number eventually replaced most what I have planted by design in late May or early June. 

In natural selection, one cannot compete with Nature; those volunteer come-back celosias are Nature, what I planted are man-made.  I am hesitated to say 劣幣驅良幣 (the bad money replaces the good one; the bad edges out the good), lest my ‘old flames’ would complain again.  Flamboyant (I bet this word comes from the flame-like celosia) and vivacious as they are, they have every right to complain.  These photos can attest to it.

Too busy though it may be, this is a chaotic beauty, if there is such a thing.