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May. 26th, 2005 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckTwo weeks ago, we lost part of the crabapple tree in our front yard. There was a brief thunderstorm with high winds. When it passed, about a third of the tree was in our driveway. Another largish branch was in the street. Scott had to clear the driveway that night because we had people over for an Amber session, and one of them had parked in the driveway.
Scott and his father are going to take the rest of the crabapple down on Saturday. They're also going to pull up the bushes growing in front of our house. Hopefully, they'll be able to manage. Both tasks need to be done and have needed doing for a while.
We don't know exactly what we'll do with the area where the bushes currently are. For the moment, we're going to put down some white rocks, something to discourage the weeds. I wouldn't mind just leaving it at that, but that offends Scott's aesthetic sense, so it's unlikely that we'll stop there. Then again, both of us hate yard work, so it may end up permanent by default.
Not to mention that it's going to give me a place to put the boxes of herbs I'm planning to get set up. I've got lemon basil, dill, sage and thyme seedlings going. It'll be another week before I'm ready to transplant them, I think. I need to get them accustomed to being outside, and some of the seedlings are still puny (well, some of them are younger, too, because they didn't sprout from the first round of seeds). I've decided to go with boxes this time because last year's experiment with using the garden plot behind the garage didn't work out very well. I'm hoping that I'll be better able to weed the boxes, especially since I can move them if I need a better position for working with them.
The fact that Delia likes rocks right now also makes me like the idea of putting down rocks of some sort. She's been trampling on some of the plants growing along the driveway in her efforts to get to the window wells there that have pebbles in them. She likes to crouch there and pick up one pebble after another, consider each and then drop it again.
The first time I saw the broken plants, I was puzzled. I couldn't figure out who or what had moved through there. I thought about a cat rolling on the plants, but that didn't seem right. I thought about someone walking, but that bed is maybe 18 inches deep, between the concrete of the driveway and the side of the house. There's no point in walking there. Unless you're not quite three feet tall and fascinated by the window wells...
This year, Scott spent considerable time thinning out the black raspberries. The point of doing that was to get at some saplings growing in the midst of the briars. Some of them weren't actually in our yard but in the narrow strip between the chain link fence and our neighbor's garage. The neighbor in question is an older lady who really can't do the work required to get them out herself (not to mention that there's no way to reach that area from her side of the fence).
I put my effort into digging up the burdock growing behind the garage. I'm hoping not to let any of that grow enough to produce burrs this year. If we're lucky, I can seriously limit what we have in that way next year. I can't stop it altogether because a lot of animals pass through there and might drop the burrs thus reseeding the dratted things. Of course, one drawback to getting rid of the burdock is that the bindweed has more space to grow. Oh, well, bindweed's prettier than burdock.
I did have a brief moment of panic when I realized that I couldn't remember exactly where I'd planted the rhubarb that Scott's parents gave us last fall. I wasn't sure I'd have differentiated between burdock and rhubarb if I'd happened to encounter the latter growing in the midst of the former. Much to my relief, I found the rhubarb coming up in another part of the yard a few days later. Looking at the rhubarb, I like to think I'd have noticed that it wasn't burdock, but... I can't be sure.
Scott and his father are going to take the rest of the crabapple down on Saturday. They're also going to pull up the bushes growing in front of our house. Hopefully, they'll be able to manage. Both tasks need to be done and have needed doing for a while.
We don't know exactly what we'll do with the area where the bushes currently are. For the moment, we're going to put down some white rocks, something to discourage the weeds. I wouldn't mind just leaving it at that, but that offends Scott's aesthetic sense, so it's unlikely that we'll stop there. Then again, both of us hate yard work, so it may end up permanent by default.
Not to mention that it's going to give me a place to put the boxes of herbs I'm planning to get set up. I've got lemon basil, dill, sage and thyme seedlings going. It'll be another week before I'm ready to transplant them, I think. I need to get them accustomed to being outside, and some of the seedlings are still puny (well, some of them are younger, too, because they didn't sprout from the first round of seeds). I've decided to go with boxes this time because last year's experiment with using the garden plot behind the garage didn't work out very well. I'm hoping that I'll be better able to weed the boxes, especially since I can move them if I need a better position for working with them.
The fact that Delia likes rocks right now also makes me like the idea of putting down rocks of some sort. She's been trampling on some of the plants growing along the driveway in her efforts to get to the window wells there that have pebbles in them. She likes to crouch there and pick up one pebble after another, consider each and then drop it again.
The first time I saw the broken plants, I was puzzled. I couldn't figure out who or what had moved through there. I thought about a cat rolling on the plants, but that didn't seem right. I thought about someone walking, but that bed is maybe 18 inches deep, between the concrete of the driveway and the side of the house. There's no point in walking there. Unless you're not quite three feet tall and fascinated by the window wells...
This year, Scott spent considerable time thinning out the black raspberries. The point of doing that was to get at some saplings growing in the midst of the briars. Some of them weren't actually in our yard but in the narrow strip between the chain link fence and our neighbor's garage. The neighbor in question is an older lady who really can't do the work required to get them out herself (not to mention that there's no way to reach that area from her side of the fence).
I put my effort into digging up the burdock growing behind the garage. I'm hoping not to let any of that grow enough to produce burrs this year. If we're lucky, I can seriously limit what we have in that way next year. I can't stop it altogether because a lot of animals pass through there and might drop the burrs thus reseeding the dratted things. Of course, one drawback to getting rid of the burdock is that the bindweed has more space to grow. Oh, well, bindweed's prettier than burdock.
I did have a brief moment of panic when I realized that I couldn't remember exactly where I'd planted the rhubarb that Scott's parents gave us last fall. I wasn't sure I'd have differentiated between burdock and rhubarb if I'd happened to encounter the latter growing in the midst of the former. Much to my relief, I found the rhubarb coming up in another part of the yard a few days later. Looking at the rhubarb, I like to think I'd have noticed that it wasn't burdock, but... I can't be sure.
