Thread: In the garden

Alrighty then...I just took a walk around my yard and woe is me. When we bought this house from gardeners there were to be flowers all over that first spring, and a couple more too, bushes that flowered, trees that flowered. I imagine they were sad as they left their garden to us but they were divorcing and going their own ways. They were trying to dig the bulbs out before they left and were even going to remove a tree in the front yard, which we put a stop to. But this is how it goes.
I already had two boys, and became pregnant a month after we signed, with twins. And for the last eight years, I've been a little busy.
And so, even though I have pruned here and there, cleared paths on and off, watered occasionally, this place is a MESS. Ivy creeping, things dying, half dead or shooting up uncontrollably, ground cover taking off, and it is so pretty, and I had to laugh, since I just spent too much on ground cover at the shop, before I took my hike behind my house. I say hike cause I have to lift my feet up and over all the blackberry, also taking over.
Grass is everywhere, everywhere, in every planter, strangling my blueberries, etcetera! I don't understand why people kill moss. I love moss, it stays low and is soft and does not need me to keep it alive.
Scotch broom is rampant. Not only in our field, but creeping silently into our immediate areas too. Too much, too, too much for us.
Today, I've pruned overhanging branches, to clear paths for people taller than me, that's almost everyone, moved a few bulbs, hope they don't die, better than being mowed over though. At least they have a chance. I've dug up little trees that are copies of one's I have already, and could not grow where they were.
We had no idea how involved this property was. *Elbows on desk, head in palms* Oye!
It is so pretty here, even so, but I have an unbelievable amount of work to do and about one month to do much of it in before I become allergic to the grass. I love pruning, so that's something. I feel better having written it out in any case.

I perhaps need to un-engage from this site.

First Olly, then Eluixa, posting away madly about working outside.

So I got to feeling guilty, iddle I?

I gathered secateurs and the telescopic pruner and attacked just one tree that, with all the rain and The Long Hot Summer, had begun blocking the back porch. Forty-five minutes, and you can hardly see any difference. There are from memory about sixty or seventy BIG trees, including some tropical rainforest racehorses, that will need attention. Then there’re maybe 150 shrubs, hundreds of different ground covers, weeds by the zillion coming up in gravel drives and paths...

How do I unjoin?

Don't un-join, you are going to need your puter seat when you've done exhausting yourself. And I need a telescopic pruner, really bad. Olly is a good influence.

Autumn and Winter are the times to prune, not in Spring when the sap is rising and the air filled with the spores of infection.

...points at Eluixa, not at upside-down Aussies. This IS Autumn.

Thanks Olly, I'll keep my pruning minimal and for the sake of clearing paths and the house, until fall. We have wood ants that like to get into the house, and I have to make sure our taller bushes don't actually make them a highway directly to our window sill, for instance.
And I want to go to Australia...I want to go everywhere...

Originally Posted by Eluixa

Alrighty then...I just took a walk around my yard and woe is me. When we bought this house from gardeners there were to be flowers all over that first spring, and a couple more too, bushes that flowered, trees that flowered. I imagine they were sad as they left their garden to us but they were divorcing and going their own ways. They were trying to dig the bulbs out before they left and were even going to remove a tree in the front yard, which we put a stop to. But this is how it goes.
I already had two boys, and became pregnant a month after we signed, with twins. And for the last eight years, I've been a little busy.
And so, even though I have pruned here and there, cleared paths on and off, watered occasionally, this place is a MESS....

Wow! We're Twins! ... well not exactly (I wasn't pregnant for example ) but I've got the same mess here. This past weekend was so cold, dreary that I didn't want to tackle it, but yeah I need to do some serious work on the plants, beds, trees, shrubs, etc. that have been ignored for the past 7 years.

Originally Posted by The Backward OX

...

How do I unjoin?

You can't, this is Hotel California!