Practicing what I preach

I was probably pushing 50 before I really bought into the idea of tackling housekeeping tasks a few minutes at a time each day, rather than letting things pile up until I reached my breaking point and embarked on a cleaning marathon. I credit Flylady for my epiphany. Although I admit I don't follow her system 100%, I have found the principle of doing a little bit at a time over a long period of time both effective and liberating.

Having routines and doing a little bit at a time works well for me in my garden, too. I am rather sensitive to both heat and bright light, so in the heat of the summer the mantra "you can do anything for 15 minutes" becomes more like 5 minutes at a time for me. You'd be surprised how many weeds you can pull in 5 minutes. Often I just take a stroll around the garden, observing what's new and what needs to be done. I may pull a few weeds, give a thirsty plant a bucket of pond water, or pick ripening vegetables. Then I go inside and cool off. I do not spend hours at a time working in our garden. It is a garden built by minutes snatched here and there over the past 12 years.

This picture shows the northwest corner of our backyard. The north wall, behind the gazebo, is a common wall we share with the HOA-maintained entrance to our development. I do not like looking at bare block walls, so we planted honeysuckle on the west wall and snail vine on the north wall. However, the HOA does not share my esthetic preferences, and we have to be vigilant in keeping the vines on our side of the fence. Today I noticed them creeping over the wall into HOA territory, so we trimmed them back. That task should have taken only 5 minutes, but it was an effort to worm ourselves into the back corner due to the fact that I had been ignoring the honeysuckle vine's stealthy creep up into the pear tree for several months. It really was a jungle in there...hot, sweaty, and overgrown by vines. If I had snipped them  back as soon as they sent their first tentative tendrils into the tips of the tree branches, I would have spared myself considerable effort and discomfort.

Honeysuckle in bloom

I like to choose plants for their fragrances as well as their appearance. This Hall's honeysuckle is planted on the block wall behind our gazebo, and has begun to bloom this week, adding its sweet smell to the potpourri in our backyard.

It has flourished in this location, and now covers several sections of wall. In fact I have to keep trimming it back so it doesn't hang over on the HOA side of the wall. Personally, I thought it looked nice, but apparently someone complained about it, so I cut it back from their side of the common wall. I let it hang down on into our front yard on our wall, though.

Since I really would prefer to look at something green and growing than bare block walls ,I've tried several kinds of vines in various locations. The two that have done the best are this one and snail vine. Snail vine has attractive purple flowers which have a longer blooming period, but it dies back in cold weather. The honeysuckle stays green year round.

It's been rather unseasonably cold and windy today. I ought to appreciate it while it lasts, because 100-degree days are not too far in our future. However, my retiree group is coming over tomorrow for lunch in the garden, and I hope the weather cooperates and is pleasant.

The never-ending story

Our adventures in gardening are a never-ending story of doing and redoing, of trying things and fixing mistakes. Case in point: this sitting area. It's in a low area of the yard, and there are drip irrigation lines going to the trees on either side of and behind it. When the lines come on, water tends to collect on the paver bricks beneath the swing. It's more an aesthetic nuisance than gardening problem, as the water will eventually seep beneath the stones where the tree roots can take advantage of it, but Mike is redoing the brick area to raise the pavers a few inches.

This is also the site of my impatient overplanting of honeysuckle vine because the climbing roses weren't growing fast enough. Earlier this spring I dug the honeysuckle out and moved it to another location, which the roses seem to appreciate.

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....

A blustery day

It's too windy to work outside today, almost like monsoon season, but unfortunately with no rain. I still get a childish thrill from being outside in the wind, and it's fun to watch things blowing around. The Hall's honeysuckle is beginning to bloom, and the wind is lifting it up the part overhanging the fence like a sail. That's a Keiffer pear tree in the upper right, bending in the wind next to the gazebo.

Back to basics

This morning I noticed that some of the vines behind the gazebo were daring to creep over the common wall again, and decided I'd better clip them back in order to avoid any HOA complaints. What I thought would take a few minutes escalated into a major pruning job.

First, I decided to prune back the lilac vine (Hardenbergia) rather severely because it was looking pretty shabby this year. There were very few blossoms, and most of the new growth was on the top of the trellis.
That done, I moved on to the next trellis, which was overgrown with Hall's honeysuckle and had a lot of dead material showing underneath. I hadn't even planted Hall's honeysuckle on this trellis....it wandered there from another location and looked rather nice last year, so true to my "Akuna Matata" gardening style, I let it stay.

That was a mistake, Hall's honeysuckle is rather invasive making it exactly the wrong kind of plant to have on the HOA common wall, although it works well on the wall where I originally planted it. So I cut it back to confine it to its original location, and excised its wandering tentacles from this trellis. Much to my surprise, I found new growth on a snail vine planted at its base. The snail vine is a better choice for this location, and should do much better now that it is no longer being suffocated by the more aggressive honeysuckle.

As I often do when working in the garden, I thought about how what I was doing applies to life. Sometimes our lives become overgrown with activities that, although attractive and good in their proper places, crowd out or hide other things that are perhaps better or more desirable. Sometimes organizations become so constrained by a tangle of competing values and goals that they can't effectively accomplish the tasks they were created to perform. I think sometimes cutting everything back to the roots is healthy and invigorating. And sometimes you will be surprised by what you find!

It's greener on our side of the fence

Today I noticed the snail vine was starting to creep over the block wall again. I think its cascades of dark green leaves and lavender flowers are lovely, but apparently it's a big no-no as far as our homeowner's association is concerned, so I snipped off the strands that threatened to peek over the wall behind our gazebo. All vegetation must be strictly confined to our side of the fence and not encroach on the HOA side. Our "green wall" consists of snail, lilac, and honeysuckle vines, and they are very vigorous growers. Besides being much more attractive to look at than concrete block walls, the vines cool the area by transpiration and blocking reflected light, making the gazebo an even nicer place to sit and relax. The honeysuckle also has an intoxicating fragrance in the spring.

The plants in the foreground are sweet potato vines. This was the first year we tried them, and we've been very pleased with how well they work to line the streambed leading from the upper to the lower pond. They spread vigorously and are easily rooted, yet aren't invasive. When we first built the system, we made the mistake of letting umbrella plant grow in the streambed. That was a bad decision; not only does it grow tall enough to block the view, it also sends its roots and shoots everywhere and actually caused water to start spilling out of the streambed and into the gazebo. I'm not sure how long these vines will last and how they will handle a freeze, but at the rate they grow, replacing them won't be problematic.