Not Everything is Pretty

Another dry day.  We cherish them and try to make the most of them.  I just got back from my three mile afternoon walk and found Tom sitting on a bench in the garden, resting.  He had just finished spading  one of the garden boxes.


This morning he was back at the task of replacing a photinia hedge with peegee type hydrangeas.  The photonia had become diseased and ugly so we finally decided to get rid of it.  But that is no easy job.

The photinia was underplanted by native salal which didn't get trimmed last year and is quite tall.

The remains of the hedge fill the yard waste bin and several sacks.  Actually this is the second batch.  We started this job early last week but unforeseen events delayed us getting back to it until this week.

Tom is bundling up the trunks after I clipped all of the leafy parts off.  They'll get picked up with the yard waste too.

Tom didn't remove the roots so he had to dig new planting holes in and around them. And then he added compost from our bins.

Finally the last plant was going in the ground.

In late winter/early spring we'll trim the salal back to about half height and then maintain it there.

Meanwhile, I was rescuing seedlings from the garden boxes before all of the debris was spaded under.  Because we compost most of the plant material, our vegetable garden acts as a nursery for seeds that are in the soil.  I dug foxglove, golden feverfew, and columbine to transplant around the yard.

Before we headed in to lunch, we harvested a few crops.

The beets will be for dinner tonight. and the parsnips will go into the stew I plan to make Friday.

So, as you see, not everything in the garden is pretty.  But there is still some beauty to be enjoyed as we work, on the ground,

and overhead.