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!

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.

Of pruning and life

I've been doing a lot of relentless pruning this week. The Carolina Jessamine that we planted on the block wall behind one of our ponds seven years ago hasn't looked so good lately. There was more dead undergrowth than green vines, and fewer blossoms. I'd pruned one of them almost to the ground- the one on the end that is easiest to get to- a few weeks ago and it is happily putting out new green shoots. So I finally decided to attack the other two, which required straddling the pond rather precariously, and taking the tangled mess out chunk by chunk. The wall looks bare now, but I think it was the best course of action in the long run.

I also took out a lot of Mexican primroses that were growing behind the lower pond and into the hibiscus bushes. They are in full bloom now and beautiful, especially since the hibiscuses aren't blooming very much yet. However, they were already encroaching on one of the new raised beds, so I felt I needed to take them out before they dropped seeds, or I'd face the same problem I have in one of the older beds.

While I was working, I thought a lot about pruning and life and the fact that I have no contract next year. Maybe a little (or a lot) of pruning is necessary to bring out the best in people- a chance to get rid of what is unsatisfying and unproductive, like my overgrown Carolina Jessamine, or deceptively easy and attractive, like the invasive Mexican primrose. Maybe.