Dogwoods, and The Deck

 We have two big, beautiful Korean Dogwoods, Cornus Kousa, that are in full bloom now.

One is in the front yard, which we can enjoy most from our upstairs windows. 

The other is in the back yard, where it joins maples.

Both trees were planted to replace native Pacific Dogwoods, which succumbed to a fungus, Dogwood, Anthracnose. We had several of the native dogwoods, but we have only one left. It is over the garden deck and the other day I was out there sweeping up the falling wisteria petals and the diseased leaves of the dogwood. The fungus causes the trees to defoliate right after they bloom. The big tree is looking pretty sick and probably doesn't have many years left. The Korean dogwoods are not susceptible to this disease so we see a lot of them planted in our area now. 

We also have a dry stream bed running next to the deck. The rocks are all from rocks we picked from our tilled ground before we planted the lawn many years ago.  Two days ago Tom finally got to another project, taking the leaf blower to the dry stream bed and cleaning out the tree debris from the past year. When he was finished we both took the opportunity to just sit and enjoy the deck.

 

The stream bed all cleaned up.

 A little shrine to Peacefulness.

 

Peacefulness which we sat and enjoyed when the work was done.  We need to do more of that.