Yard Work

3 1/4” was the final tally on the rain yesterday. Tuesday, we got 1 1/4”. The yard and frogs are happy. Of the later, I saw a little thumbnail sized one this morning when I went outside to check the rain gauge. Yesterday, when I did my daily early morning inspection walk around the pool, Grace was watching what I would call a garden toad jump in the same place against the pool screen, over and over and over. It was still fruitlessly hopping there when I came back with a plastic box to capture it for its ride to the outside and freedom. Gracie wandered off.

I have been working like crazy to get the yard as ready as I can for the 6 weeks we will neglect it while we are in New Zealand. I’m having CC come every Tuesday to help me. I’m trying to figure out what I can have her do while I’m gone. She loves to deadhead salvias. I want torpedo grass dug out. A management problem. Grant has been assigned to Roundup the edge of all the beds every Friday. That is making it easier for us to spend time on other projects.

Monday, Alan came for the 3 hour landscaping consultation he’d donated  and I’d bought at the Orange Audubon’s annual auction. I envisioned us walking the yard, looking at my previous landscape design plans, then sitting on the porch, drinking iced tea, while we discussed his ideas. Alan, on the other hand, had brought his clippers and loppers. He is a fastidious man, appalled but kind about my leaving weeds to go to seed so various pollinators and birds have food. We clipped and lopped away. He taught me where to trim individual branches and how to determine how much I needed to cut back. We hacked away, with my promising that I was getting loads of mulch to cover all the newspaper and cardboard edges in my various garden beds. He wants every yard to be neat and tidy. Me too, but it seems always a futile hope. 

He is a retired nurseryman. Any insect or disease damage among my plants brought out the clippers. I tend to be blasé, figuring survival of the fit, however, I’m going to try his more aggressive method for a while, at least until I lose steam. 

Even though it was hotter than blazes, Alan offered to trim the Japanese blueberry tree outside our front window. Soon, he was up our ladder with our battery powered chainsaw, cutting away. Before owning the nursery, he was a professional tree trimmer. Now the blueberry looks the same from the street, but missing the whole back side which hung over the roof. If I were 60, I’d have it chopped down and replaced with a native, but I’m not, so it stays. Just like the huge champhor on the north side. All the sawing and the banging when the limbs hit the ground sent Gracie to cower under our bedclothes. She didn’t come out until a half hour all the noise had stopped.

Then Alan insisted we carry all he’d cut off down to the street for bulk pickup. He was not going to leave a mess. Thank goodness he spurred us on, and the job got done, not left for the next day. Grant made neat piles under his supervision, and they dragged them out. Now light gets to that bed, and I can plant it after our trip. I certainly got my $160 auction donation. But wait, there’s more. Alan has ideas about what to plant and will take me shopping, so I get the wholesale price. And he’s a birder. He stopped and heard parula warblers, their songs out of my hearing range.

CC and I spent 2 1/2 hours the next day, in the sun, chopping the branches up so we could make mulch piles of the smaller pieces. Grant borrowed 2 of Nancy’s garbage cans and with our 2 cans, was able to get all of the limbs ready for the garbage men. I’d hoped to keeps some for edging, but we were exhausted. There will be more another time.

As Alan said, half of gardening is encouraging plants to grow, the other half is trimming them back.