Lunch break at work. I'd rather be gardening.
This weekend I ripped up about three square yards of ivy, which hardly makes a dent in the invading ivy horde that beseiges my back yard. I have the creeping (b-dum ching!) suspicion that the sources of the ivy are in the neighbors' yards, so my task will never be done.
I also started taking dead wood out of the willow. It lost it's prettiest limb in the storm last week, and is left with the two that shoot sideways into the neighbors yard, and the one that grows straight up and rubs against all the other branches. The last seems healthy but ugly, and one is supposed to remove rubbing branches, so I'm inclined to take it out, but the tree's pretty scraggly as-is, and it just lost that limb, so I'm not sure how well it could deal with more amputation.
I'm afraid that eventually I might have to take the whole tree out, which makes me sad. I'm going to try to save it first.
Sunday I saw four species of birds in my yard I hadn't seen there before -- Chestnut-backed chickadee, Anna's hummingbird, bushtits, and a townsend's warbler. The poor hummingbird was trying to extract nectar from the fake flowers on the gawdawful flamingo wreath, poor thing.
So far all of the yard work at my house has been clean-up and removal (the pile of rhody branches in the side yard is taller than I am), but as february approaches I need to start thinking about planting things. Most importantly, the area around the bird feeder needs some low (3 feet ish) shrubs, so my lil hoppity visitors have a place to hide after I take out the wisteria. Turns out I don't know about many shrubs that stay that small, so I started research...
...and discovered that one of my possible contenders, a barberry variety, is often invasive. The invasive type is Japanese...just like the wisteria. And Japanese honeysuckle. Is anything from Japan NOT invasive? I'm terrified that one morning I'll wake up and the entire northwest landscape will be singing "I think I'm turning Japanese."
I also started taking dead wood out of the willow. It lost it's prettiest limb in the storm last week, and is left with the two that shoot sideways into the neighbors yard, and the one that grows straight up and rubs against all the other branches. The last seems healthy but ugly, and one is supposed to remove rubbing branches, so I'm inclined to take it out, but the tree's pretty scraggly as-is, and it just lost that limb, so I'm not sure how well it could deal with more amputation.
I'm afraid that eventually I might have to take the whole tree out, which makes me sad. I'm going to try to save it first.
Sunday I saw four species of birds in my yard I hadn't seen there before -- Chestnut-backed chickadee, Anna's hummingbird, bushtits, and a townsend's warbler. The poor hummingbird was trying to extract nectar from the fake flowers on the gawdawful flamingo wreath, poor thing.
So far all of the yard work at my house has been clean-up and removal (the pile of rhody branches in the side yard is taller than I am), but as february approaches I need to start thinking about planting things. Most importantly, the area around the bird feeder needs some low (3 feet ish) shrubs, so my lil hoppity visitors have a place to hide after I take out the wisteria. Turns out I don't know about many shrubs that stay that small, so I started research...
...and discovered that one of my possible contenders, a barberry variety, is often invasive. The invasive type is Japanese...just like the wisteria. And Japanese honeysuckle. Is anything from Japan NOT invasive? I'm terrified that one morning I'll wake up and the entire northwest landscape will be singing "I think I'm turning Japanese."