Back to The Garden - Soon Very Soon

I've had lots of things going on at my house and not necessarily in the garden. I have been painting and cleaning and now it's time to get ready to go back out and do some late summer garden work very soon. I have mulch that needs to be put down around shrubs and lots of clean up is going to start. With cool weather just around the corner I will be doing some more work at the woods' edge - trying to get rid of poison ivy, grapevines and honeysuckle. I so want to get some of that yard reclaimed and put in some ferns and flowering shrubs. Hopefully, in the next day or so I will have some pictures to post.

For some reason one of my japonicas that I planted this spring and that had been doing great has some dead branches. I can't figure out why. Hopefully, it will recover. I do know that we could sure use some rain. Haven't had much rain since the downpour that caused the flood on August 4th.

Mother Nature's Vengenance

OK, so I’ve dug and pulled and cut and pulled some more and I finally found that there is a bit of terra firma down below all this tangled mess. I have managed to identify winter creeper, poison ivy, Japanese honeysuckle, grape vines and that wonder thing called a green brier (I’m not sure if I found it or it found me, whichever, it did leave it’s mark as did the poison ivy). The poison ivy has a trunk on it that is probably over an inch in diameter and the grapevines you could swing from. The honeysuckle and winter creeper – well, what can I say other than they seem to have been in some kind of contest with each other and everything else. I really wonder how many years it’s been since anyone cleaned up this area. I have made a slight change but there’s lots more to be done. As I was told, “Rome was not built in a day”.

I knew it! There really is ground underneath the tangle.