a trimming frenzy

Yesterday afternoon I went out to bag up the trimmings I had done on the bushes in the back yard. I bagged up what had been trimmed and then in a burst of misplaced enthusiasm, I decided to do some radical trimming of the remaining forsythia bushes. If you aren't familiar with forsythia, you won't know that it reproduces itself vigorously. It sends up shoots from its roots and also makes roots wherever hanging branches touch the ground. In one corner, I have a huge bush, which has spread in three directions (no four actually, as it somehow manages to go under the fence). So I pulled up small offshoots and cut the larger bushes down to the ground. I have clay soil, with lots of rocks, so digging anything up is practically impossible. I will have to use Roundup if I want to actually kill the bushes, and I hate to use that kind of stuff. I may have to settle for just cutting them back to the ground each year. Anyway, the result of an hour's cutting is a pile of branches, twice as big as what I started out with! It's likely to take twice as long to bag as it did to trim. Guess my work is cut out for me today. I will be at my church library this morning and at the dentist this afternoon, but I hope to be the trimmings bagged up later this afternoon. What fun - NOT!

It was a lovely day for walking yesterday and I did the circuit around Lake Elkhorn in Columbia. I've not measured it, but I estimate it as just under 2 miles. I saw two herons - a white one and a Great Blue. Both were fishing successfully, as I watched. When a heron sees a fish, the bird very slowly bends down toward the water and then SNAP, it grabs the fish and swallows it. I also saw many small turtles sunning themselves on logs and a couple of larger ones swimming just below the surface. Half the fun of walking around the lake is to spot wild creatures. Most of the other walkers I see aren't looking at the wildlife. It's their loss. However, I really must get some lightweight binoculars to take on my walks. Creature watching is much better with binoculars. Buying a good pair is another one of those things I plan to do one of these days.

Patty and I walked again last night - about 3 miles, I think. We are getting to know all the neighborhoods just beyond out own. As we walk, we critique the gardens and wonder what the inside of the houses look like. Both Patty and I are avid gardeners. Patty likes neat gardens with mulch showing between the plants. She removes plants that are done blooming or aren't doing well. She has enriched the soil a lot and her plants grow much bigger than expected, which is great. I fertilize less, crowd many plants into a small space and let them take over the flower bed and spread out over the sidewalk and into the lawn. My flower beds are a mass of mixed plants, a hodge podge of color and structure. We have friendly competition between our front yards, both in what we are growing and in the seasonal decorations we put out. Patty does far more decorating than I do. She already has an interesting variety of pumpkins on her steps - a pale green one and a really ugly striped one, as well as the usual orange ones. One of these days, I will take some photos. I still have photos from my England trip in my camera, and I don't know when I'll get them into my computer and then onto Flickr or into this blog. One of these days......