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A garden is a lovesome thing, god wot
Well, some gardens may be, but mine sure isn't. To start with, I don't really have anything that could be described as a garden. What was here when I bought the house was landscaping rather than a garden. Rock mulch (yuck), bushes, and a fake fence with some plants in it.
And it's all got away from me. The arbor vitae was used to have a buckle around it, but it broke, and now it's kind of floppy. (And I never liked arbor vitae in the first place, though I'm not sure why. I just think they're ugly.) One of the supports on the fake fence has rotted and it's falling down.
My lawn mower guy kept putting me off ("it's raining," or "it's too hot," or "I need to do a favor for a friend") and my front lawn looked a bit excessive but not too bad, so I let him do so, and just figured he would catch up later.
But I didn't notice what was going on in my backyard (because I don't spend enough time back there, obviously), and it's now a mass of thistles and something else prickly (burdock?) and other weeds and volunteer trees, and is really scary. I've hired![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fireopal's next-door neighbor, who's a landscaper, to try to wrestle the whole place back into shape.
She recommends taking down two trees, which is sad. I think both of them are ashes, and I could tell one of them had problems, but I hadn't realized the other one needed more than trimming.
She also says that one of the trees in my backyard, which is almost up against the fence, has to be a volunteer tree originally, because no sane person would have planted a tree there. It's over 30 feet tall (at a guess) and is therefore Not My Fault (I moved here in 2003). But until yesterday, I hadn't really thought about the fact that volunteer tree sprouts eventually turn into real trees if you don't do anything about them. I feel rather like the character in The Little Prince whose planet was taken over by baobab trees. Only not quite that dilatory.
And it's all got away from me. The arbor vitae was used to have a buckle around it, but it broke, and now it's kind of floppy. (And I never liked arbor vitae in the first place, though I'm not sure why. I just think they're ugly.) One of the supports on the fake fence has rotted and it's falling down.
My lawn mower guy kept putting me off ("it's raining," or "it's too hot," or "I need to do a favor for a friend") and my front lawn looked a bit excessive but not too bad, so I let him do so, and just figured he would catch up later.
But I didn't notice what was going on in my backyard (because I don't spend enough time back there, obviously), and it's now a mass of thistles and something else prickly (burdock?) and other weeds and volunteer trees, and is really scary. I've hired
fireopal's next-door neighbor, who's a landscaper, to try to wrestle the whole place back into shape.She recommends taking down two trees, which is sad. I think both of them are ashes, and I could tell one of them had problems, but I hadn't realized the other one needed more than trimming.
She also says that one of the trees in my backyard, which is almost up against the fence, has to be a volunteer tree originally, because no sane person would have planted a tree there. It's over 30 feet tall (at a guess) and is therefore Not My Fault (I moved here in 2003). But until yesterday, I hadn't really thought about the fact that volunteer tree sprouts eventually turn into real trees if you don't do anything about them. I feel rather like the character in The Little Prince whose planet was taken over by baobab trees. Only not quite that dilatory.
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Or, if that doesn't work I'll need to find goats. Goats with flamethrowers.
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P.
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Good luck with the yard/garden stuff! If I didn't have my lawn guy it would completely get away from me, too. I'm not cut out to own this sort of yard.
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P.
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K.
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Thank you for giving me the phrase "volunteer tree." I'd never before heard it; it makes the poor trees seem even more unfortunate, doesn't it? "I thought the lawn would look much nicer if it had a tree, so, well, I ... sort of dropped myself here. And grew. All on my own. Because I thought you'd like me." *awkward pause* "You don't. Well. I suppose you'll have to dig me up, then — no, no, I don't mind. My mistake. Don't bother your head about it. What? I am not crying. Trees don't cry!"
Seriously, though; good luck on taming the back yard. It's definitely the kind of thing that would have gotten away from me.
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I'm not a gardener, but I have friends who are, and they're the ones who taught me about volunteer trees. The landscaper said she blames rabbit poop for a lot of them. And I certainly have rabbits. Enough for hassenpfeffer, if I could do anything about them. And of course, most oak trees are the result of acorn caches abandoned by amnesiac squirrels. (I love the phrase "amnesiac squirrels.")
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There's a strip next to the driveway, between the driveway and the neighbor's fence, that's a nuisance to deal with because it's too narrow for a lawn mower. I suppose it could be a garden, but for now it's going to get killed d-e-d, dead, then covered with plastice and mulch over that. Low maintenance. Though I have been contemplating the notion of planting raspberry bushes there. It's not as if they have anywhere else they could spread to, except the other side of the fence, maybe.
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I like the "amnesiac squirrels" phrase! (Although I'm certain the squirrels would be insulted. If they remembered to be.)
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We saw her as we were headed out to walk the dogs last night - she told us 'Thank you very much', and said that she thought the two of you were going to be able to get along well.
Ask her what she put in the area just south of her garage - it's another of those difficult/impossible to mow areas, and she found some ground cover plant for it.
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And yet, I have about the same problems you do, albeit with trees you'd consider more exotic. The Paulownia in the back yard is getting entangled with the Power Lines, the Olive is getting much too big & cluttered with suckers, the Bougainvilla is lopsided because of the trimming by the neighbor (who likes its flowers but doesn't understand that they form only at the tips of long branches -- it's the Nature of the Beast), the Camphor tree in front has seriously large branches that threaten to crash through the roof, and roots that have lifted the blacktop driveway as much as three feet in places (this being Southern California, garages serve the functions attics and basements do in some parts of the country), several California fan palms are getting almost too big for me to remove, a black fig (barely edible) is about ready to invade the sewer-line, and the Angels' Trumpet, though barely tall enough to be called trees, has spread across most of the yard. Almost all of these are volunteer trees (or, as I sometimes say, weed trees).
And having it all cleaned up (I'm too old, decrepit, or lazy to do much of the work) will reveal that the house is in serious need of repainting & window-replacement. I'm thinking in terms of "It'll cost almost as much as the original purchase price of the house (c. 36,000, in 1955)". Similar (though better-maintained) places in the neighborhood are being offered at $265,000, so it might be worth the cost, but....
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K.