A Post As Exciting As Watching Plants Grow

So we had these bushes bordering the back yard. When we had the fence installed in the fall of 2005, we were able to clip them back from the property line almost to the foot required by the fence installers. That was the last time anybody (other than the odd squirrel or bunny) was able to get between the bushes and the fence.

The bushes came out of this winter looking like a bunch of dead sticks, as appealing as poisoned blackberry brambles along the highway. We had seen them weather several winters without any discernible loss of leaf, so we started thinking about how to replace them. Then they rallied in time to push out a record-breaking growth spurt, taking over not only our yard, but sticking through the fence and ten feet into the sky, so annoying that our shy, also-quite-pigletty neighbor started asking about our plans for them.

I had to hunt for pictures with the bushes in them, because we keep forgetting that before-and-after shots require you to remember to take before shots. This is what the bushes looked like last year.

First we tried cutting them back. We hired this done, thankfully, because it took the gardeners a full day to cut them back to fence height, and to try to cut them off the fence. It turned out that they had grown so close to the fence that it was impossible to make them look neat. And the things vined up from the ground, making them look like four-foot-tall weeds.

So we made the decision: Off with their heads. And bodies. And roots. The gardener cut them out and the stump grinder came at 8:00 on a Saturday morning (sorry neighbors) and obliterated the last traces of them. What was left was bare and ugly.

As regular readers know, Scotty enjoys helping me take photos. Here he is directing the shot of the newly bare fence.

Now comes the do-over. After some garden shopping and web surfing, we chose Euonymus (the short ones) and Arborvitae (the ones that look like Arborvitae), both which grow up, but not so much out. The corner is reserved for a pine tree. We're thinking white pine.

Directly across from our neighbors (we live on the corner of a cul-de-sac, making our back yard their side yard), we opted for some more fluffy flora - pampas grass and a nice Colorado Spruce. Here's Drew, trying to turn the best side towards the house. I'll have you know I dug about half of the holes for these plants, including this one (Drew was too busy building me a shed - more on that later).

There's more re-landscaping to do: planting the corner pine tree, making the pilgrimage out to the wilds of Hillsboro to buy clumping bamboo to replace the wisteria-destroyed fence in front of the master bath, and then doing something about ground cover to keep from cleaning muddy paws all winter.

Sounds like award-winning blogging to me.