Chop, chop

 It's warming up a little bit. The low last night was 28, but it is getting up into the high sixties during the day. Gardeners are advised not to prune frost damaged plants until danger of frost has passed and/or new growth has appeared, but we've been doing it anyway in certain situations. We're also somewhat constrained by the fact that once-a-year open trash pickup is this week in our area, and we want to take advantage of that as much as possible.

There are four bougainvillea plants on the narrow side part of our yard that we decided to take out. They've been there about ten years and are beautiful, thriving plants when they are blooming, but they are not in a good place. There are only about ten feet between the house and the block perimeter wall, and they take up so much space that it's hard to walk through the area from the side gate to the back yard without being attacked by vicious thorns. When I originally planted them, my idea was to have an attractive view from the bedroom windows, something more esthetically pleasing than a bare concrete block wall. Although they perform admirably in that function, they need to go. In their place, we're going to plant grapes and train the vines along the wall.

We also took down several limbs from the lemon tree, which is overhanging the trellis in one of the vegetable beds and creating too much shade for the peas and beans I've tried to grow there. The tree is quite large and produces hundreds of lemons, far too many for us to use. I give bags of them away and we also squeeze and freeze the juice for making lemonade.