I looked around the garden today.

The vegetable garden, which lay fallow last year, has been taken over primarily by wild geranium, secondarily by what I think is hairy bittercress, with a dandelion or two and some grasses. What looks like a mess at the bottom of this photo is the tops of the blueberry bushes outside the vegetable garden. I think I’m going to let the weeds grow in the paths (keep them mowed) and I’ll weed the beds as I get ready to plant.

I just noticed the shadows. I hope it’s just because it’s late afternoon. If I lose the sun here, I’ll be limited to container gardening. We just had our trees cut back a couple of years ago. This year we will start the three year process of cutting the lilacs from trees to bushes. (3 years because I don’t want to lose all the blooms for 3 years–so cut 1/3 a year.) The other tall bushes along that back fence are also being cut back. This should all help keep the area sunny.

That’s all to the right of this view of the garden. To the left, which fortunately is north, is a gimongous cedar tree in the neighbor’s yard. It now pretty much covers the shed that is right next to the garden. I don’t mind that. What I do mind is the wild growth of what I think is evergreen huckleberry. It’s used as a hedge plant here and it make a really nice hedge. But when we moved here, it apparently ha never been trimmed and it almost reached our house. Cutting it back to the fence gave us a lot more room than we realized we had. It’s a constant battle to keep it out of our yard.

As you can see, it towers above the house. (The green directly under the eave, but well in the back of the photo, is the cedar.) We’re on the sun side of it. It grows very well in sun. If you look closely (click image for larger view), you can see it’s covered with buds and flowers in clusters. These produce a gazillion berries. They’re good for the birds, but I think they have a 90%+ chance of sprouting when they fall to the ground. . And the tops have never been cut properly. One year we and a neighbor whose view they blocked paid to have them trimmed but the then owner didn’t allow us to cut more than what was over our property. Sometimes the electric company does a little trimming, too. But over all, they are a lovely green wall with a LOT of maintenance

Anyway, one of these is growing under the cedar, which is pushing it into our yard. There’s a little fenced notch in that corner. I don’t know if it was to accommodate a path to the lot below (we have a gate there) or if it is actually part of the neighbor’s lot. I’m going to check. If it’s ours that huckleberry is coming out. And since he did remove a lot of smaller huckleberries under the tree on his side, he may get rid of this one or at least let us get rid of it.

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This came up on Facebook today. I no longer have any bleeding heart. I need to correct that.