Acting like a tree-hugger

My dad sent me this email today which had me ROLLING. He's the man who can make me laugh more than just about anyone. And uses very few words to do it. Now THAT's talent.

You have a beautiful yard. I love the landscaping that you've done.

And your pruning job is first class. But then you learned from the master.

Love

Dad

Of course, he wouldn't agree with me doing yard work on Sunday, because that's SUPPOSED to be the day of rest. Sometimes I think of working on the yard as very peaceful. Does that count?

Anyhoo- I went into action.

The weapons:


The before and afters (before pics are on the left) I've circled a couple of the before areas because it's kinda hard to see. You can click on the picture for a larger view if you're in the mood....

This thing? I wanted to chop off my arms by the time I was done. Human arms are NOT meant to hold up heavy tools for that long. I'm just sure of it. I've decided to hire our gardener to finish this job. Yeouch.




Here are the shrubs in front of our front door. They were getting a little 'scruffy'. By far the easiest of the jobs today.

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Here are the shrubs that got hacked to death last year and looked so hideous. I told BER they'd grow back! I didn't take pictures of both sides of the driveway, because it looks pretty much the same. All 300 feet (x 2) of shrubs. OUCH- my arms!



And finally... remember when I said I thought my garden could use a little red? I think I was right. I can't wait until the geraniums grow bigger. I think it'll look really great. Notice toward the right of the 'after' picture- my orange lillies are starting to bloom. Yay!

My dad. He's the ultimate pruner. When we lived about 15 minutes away from each other, I'd ask him to come to my place to prune my trees and shrubs. He seemed to always be up to the task. Or, perhaps he just likes playing with sharp objects. Either way, he enjoys himself whilst hacking things to the nubbins.

Before marrying the bearded eye-roller , I lived in a 'shared wall' home. It's kinda like a duplex, but you own your home and have your own fenced yard, etc. There was a shrub in need of pruning between mine and my neighbors' driveway, and I asked my dad if he would prune it for me one time. He asked me what shape I'd like and I told him that I wanted it to look like an elephant balancing a ball on its trunk.

He took me seriously.

Let's just say that it didn't look anything like the Disneyland image I had in my head. In fact, my neighbor's only comment was, "Well, isn't that interesting...."

Since they live a few states away, I am now the pruner of my domain. BER gets a little nervous when he sees me with:
A: Pruning shears
B: Electric hedge trimmer
C: THE MACHETE (absolutely deserving of upper case letters)


Whilst gardening on Saturday, I decided to 'trim' one of the trees in my garden. It's been bugging the livin' daylights out of me. Have you ever trimmed your bangs and saw that they were uneven, so you trimmed a little more, and then more again? Well, my tree trimming adventure was something like that. BER was standing by, looking rather nervous as I was having my little adventure.

Eventually he said, "Honey, soon it's just going to be a big stick", and then he made me hand over my shears. Between you and me, I'd have to say that he was right. It now bugs the livin' daylights out of me because it looks just weird. (it's the little tree with the pole holding it up.)


I mentioned to him that next weekend will involve lots of pruning and thinning out some of the stuff that's too 'thick' in my garden. We 'pruners' know that you can't allow plants to overshadow other plants. As you can see from the previous picture, my plants (mostly lillies of various kinds) are getting overcrowded. There needs to be space between plants so they get sunlight and nutrients. BER doesn't understand this concept. He tells me that he thinks everything should butt up against each other so there is no room for weeds.

Funny man.... funny man....

It's not like he's the one out there pulling the weeds. I will NOT let him anywhere NEAR my garden anymore after he thought a newly sprouting poppy plant was a weed. (me thinks this was just a ploy on his part to get out of weeding forever, by the way...)

I'm pretty sure that he'll be keeping a watchful eye on me when I go for another round of hedge trimming out front. Last year looked pretty hideous after I finished, but it all grew back JUST FINE. Now I just need to even it all up a "titch".

I think I'll suggest that BER goes golfing or something to keep us out of harms way.

By 'harms way' I mean harm to me. I'm fairly certain that he'll want to bop me a good one once I'm through pruning.

As y'all know- I'm a coffee addict with a capital C and capital A. Holy smokes, do I love coffee.

I'm also very particular on how it's prepared. I don't like brewed coffee. Yech and yuck. I like espresso, lattes and americanos. My drink of choice is espresso with a bit of half and half and a packet of splenda. Second choice is a straight shot of espresso down the hatch.

Remember when my espresso maker broke in January? Oh, I'm sure you don't, but pretend you do. I must have been so devastated by it that I didn't even write about it. I can't find a post anywhere about the broken espresso maker. Either that, or I was too drugged up at the time to write properly.

Anyhoo- it was quickly replaced (I mean in TWO days, and about a week after I had surgery) by this lil' baby:


PS- magnifica is right. LOVE this machine.

But that's not what I'm reviewing (even though it gets an A+). Let's talk coffee, shall we?

As particular as I am about wine (which I haven't had in over a month due to the head bonking, poor me...), it's nothing compared to how particular I am about coffee. I remember almost fainting when Michael told me that he drinks folgers crystals. I immediately went into action and bought him a coffee maker and sent him REAL coffee.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Michael , but I'm assuming you're back to the folgers? I think we brought the wrong baby home from the hospital. You simply can NOT be my brother.

Anyhoo- my coffee of choice these days is Peets- Major Dickason's blend. Deeeeelish!

I'm enjoying it right now, as a matter of fact.

In other news:
I got off my arse and gardened for a bit yesterday. My predictions of being showered and dressed by 5pm were almost spot on. By the time I finished in the garden, and then showered it was 5:05.

I got into something very nasty in the garden and my forearms, chest and legs looked like they'd been in some sort of gang fight.

Could it have been this?


Or was it this?


Up close and personal to the little prickly thing (although it looks fairly innocent from this view):


In any case- both of those obnoxious things are DEAD to me! DEAD, I tell you!

I've decided that my gardens need some RED.


I think I'm going to go out today and buy some red geraniums. I've heard that they cut down on mosquitoes, so we'll test that theory out. The bearded eye-roller and I love to sit on our back porch bench, as you know, but we do not like being eaten alive. I dunno- maybe we're too fussy.

Anyhoo, I'll post the 'afters' when I'm done, for those of you that give a rats behind about that sort of thing.

I'm feeling great today (always feel a need to post when I'm feeling good. It sorta balances out the whiny posts!)

Have a great Sunday everyone!

I don't know what that means, but it seems fitting.

Last night after I got home from work, I saw our mourning doves hovering around so decided to go put some food in the flat bottom feeder.

Uhhhh- as I've said before, I take my feeding of the birds in the 'hood very seriously and have five different types of feeders for different types of birds.

Anyhoo- as I was filling the feeder, I noticed that 'someone' was in a very happy place at the moment:


What you're looking at is a baby woodpecker that somehow got INSIDE the bird feeder. The feed holes are seriously small, so that had to be a LOT of work.


I wonder if he saw just the perfect seed in there that he just HAD to have. Kind of reminds me of that little boy that got caught in the stuffed toy vending machine.

The little bird seemed pretty happy about being in there. He would eat a little, rest, then eat a little more. I'm sure he would have been happy to stay there until all the food was gone.

After taking his picture (because I was pretty sure nobody would believe me), the bearded eye-roller helped me to set him free.

I noticed him (or maybe a sibling) come back to the feeder about 15 minutes later, probably trying to figure out how to get back in. Of course, I'm really glad that today is a telecommute day because now I can (and have been) check the bird feeder every 10 minutes (exaggerating) (a little).

I'm telling you- being the bird lady is a LOT of responsibility.

Wow- today was just what the doctor ordered. The sun started shining shortly after my last blog post, so I put on my gardening hat and gloves and went to work.

For you literal types, I was wearing more than a hat and gloves....

I filled up the large landscaping bin (I think it's 48 gallons?) with branches and weeds and planted a few seeds. I also sat on the bench for a while and enjoyed watching the birds and squirrels. It seriously felt like I was smack in the middle of a Disney movie when a couple of butterflies circled the area.

That is until I had another encounter with the stupid stinging nettle.

As soon as that stuff hit the back of my legs I said, "Stupid stinging nettle" and then I actually argued back "OK, which is more stupid, the nettle or you?". I was arguing with myself. Yup.

So maybe it wasn't a Disney movie after all. It sounds more like a scene out of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".