What's gardening without mistakes?  I make them all the time and usually learn from them.  Most are genuine mistakes as I am a trial and error gardener who has no formal horticulture or landscaping training and I seem to learn the best by having something go awry.  Years ago when Bob and I bought our first house I made the mistake of letting some mint spill out from a pot and it rooted itself in no time in the garden bed.  It took so much work to get rid of that mint and I pulled it and pulled it out and still found runners here and there right up until we moved.  It was the plant I could not eradicate.

I promised myself I would never plant something that invasive ever again outside of a container and if I did put it in a container I would make sure it wasn't in a spot that would allow it to escape into the beds.   Well, last fall I decided that I loved my neighbor's pink evening primrose so much that I would go ahead and plant it *in my front beds* and just stay on top of it and not let it get away from me.  Yeah right.  Within the six months it wintered over the root systems went crazy and I began finding it popping up everywhere, yards and yards away of where it was originally planted.  So this was a very stupid mistake because I knew better and went ahead and did it anyway.

I've pulled and hacked and pulled some more and yet I am still finding it everywhere.  Lesson learned again.  Do not plant something that is an invasive spreader unless you are seriously committed to it and have no plans to grow anything else in the area that will need to compete.  As for me I'll continue to pull out runners as they pop up - probably until we move from this house.