nlbarber

...the Atlanta Botanical Garden, not my little backyard. The ABG has these programs periodically as a membership perk, but as most of them are scheduled on weekday mornings, I generally give them a pass. Today's topic was enough to drag me out, though: "Pitcher plants and dwarf sumac: a love story". Doesn't sound thrilling to you? Perhaps you didn't spend large chunks of your formative years wandering around a south Georgia pitcher plant bog with your parents. <g>

( The talk, the breakfast, and all that )

Well, sort of idled away. Friday at least was busy, it's just Saturday and Sunday that seem to have been mostly spent working jigsaw puzzles.

I did get part of the "shopping for Daddy" list done--( the list, and why )

( and some gardening )

The last couple of weekends were pretty productive in the gardening arena, though as usual I bounced from task to task leaving many partially done. One big task was digging out 6 or 7 greenbriar bulbs from under the big azaleas on my back fence line. However, there are still about 3 or 4 shoots that I've marked to try and dig, before going to the Roundup strategy recommended by trolleypup.

( Of building walkways, liriope, whacking shrubs, liriope, transplanting ginger, and liriope )

Yesterday was sunny and about 60 degrees, so after my Jazzercise class I pulled on an old sweatshirt and headed outside to enjoy the weather. After aborted attempts to start sanding off the rust and old paint on the bird-feeder pole (that hasn't had a feeder on it in a couple of years), I moved behind the pole to the last "wild" corner of the yard.

Since I bought this house, I've been gradually reclaiming parts of the yard from an excess of English ivy. The back yard began with a border of the stuff growing out about 4 or 5 feet into the yard from the ivy-covered back fence-and-wall. By now (10 years of sporadic efforts later) the ivy has been reduce to some covering the fence down to the wall that's below the fence, a few patches of re-growth, and the one wild corner where the ivy still covers the ground, several overgrown azaleas, a couple of hydrangeas, and whatever else might be hiding back there.

A few weeks ago I took the pruning saw to the front of the azaleas, and cut them back so the branches no longer touched the feeder pole (which would have provided easy access for feeder-raiding squirrels, once I've got a feeder again). Yes, I know it's not the time to prune a spring-blooming shrub, but I gotta do these things when the urge hits, and just sacrifice the flowers for this year. That pruning let me move in underneath yesterday, beginning with pulling ivy, then breaking off dead branches from the azaleas, pulling up 7-foot-long dead blackberry canes (this corner is a favorite bird perch, and many seeds get planted in the undergrowth), and doing a little more pruning of living branches.

To give an idea of "overgrown azaleas": I can stand up underneath these, in the interior that hasn't been getting enough light to grow leaves. Now that I've sliced several feet off the front of the bushes, I hope the young suckers and sprouts will fill in the middle, and I'll have an area of azaleas with the same height as the old, but about half the width.

After about 2 hours I quit, having pulled the ivy from somewhat less than half the corner and having piled up lots of dead branches. I stopped when I found a cluster of greenbriar shoots, which will need careful digging both to avoid the vicious thorns and to try find the tubers which will only sprout anew if left in place. Greenbriar has an uncanny ability to grow its rhizomes under and through other root systems, and this cluster is completely entwined with a couple of the azaleas. I'll tackle it another day.