Balls O' Cotton Goodbyes

I have read numerous times that cotton is one of the most chemically dependent crops humans grow. Someone forgot to tell that to the cotton tree that has been growing in my garden for the last fifteen years.
















Cotton in my garden is a large perennial shrub that makes cotton bolls 2 and 3 times a year. I have never sprayed it with a thing or fertilized it except with the same leaf litter compost that everything else is mulched with. It grows huge. Quickly.

I look at this shrub and I wonder why cotton isn't grown like grapes, year round and on a trellis system for easy picking.

I killed it once before many years ago when it had engulfed a huge swath of the back corner of the garden and its charm no longer outweighed the space it was hogging. I let one grow back though. A rambling shrub, it climbed 20 feet into the top of the Dwarf Poinciana trees.















The process of simplifying my garden is going to be a long task and the obvious monsters have to go. I chopped and tugged the cotton out of the thorny Poinciana and stacked it neatly along the fence line to decompose. Here it lies in a heap in the back corner under the Dwarf Poinciana trees.
















A Big Pile O' Cotton
Fine absorbent nesting material I am sure for the denizens who lurk back there.