Monitor and adjust

"Monitor and adjust" is one of those teaching mantras every educator must learn to use. Carefully made lesson plans may not work as anticipated, so a good teacher observes what is happening as he/she teaches, and makes changes based on those observations. It's a continual. ongoing process. What works well today may not work well tomorrow.

The technique works in many other areas of life, especially gardening. This photo shows the back side of an arbored seating area overlooking one of our ponds. I originally envisioned it as a rose arbor, and planted  Iceberg and Don Juan climbing roses on the sides of the wooden arch. After a couple of years of years with very little in the way of rose growth up the arbor, I got impatient and planted Hall's honeysuckle last year, which I knew would grow quickly.

It did, but this year to my surprise the roses have also taken off. The Iceberg canes are blooming about a third of the way up the arbor as you can see on the left side of the arbor, and the Don Juan canes are about half way up the other side. Assuming their progress continues, I will likely want to remove the Hall's honeysuckle vines.

The bare branches in the upper right belong to an orchid tree which has apparently been killed off to the ground by this winter's unusually cold weather. It's coming out from the roots, but I am losing hope that any higher portions of the tree have survived. For a moment this morning, I thought I saw new green growth on one of the branches, but on closer inspection found that it was an errant Hall's honeysuckle vine taking advantage of its scaffolding. At some point I will need to decide what to do about the tree...whether to take it out entirely and replace it, or cut it back and see what happens with the new growth at its base. Some articles I've read suggest that the result could be a beautiful, multitrunked tree in place of a rather spindly single-trunked specimen. So I think I'll give it some time and see what happens.

Monitor and adust, monitor and adjust....