’21/08/05

That’s how today feels to me. I have so many things I could be doing, plenty of things I should be doing, even things I want to be doing…

’21/08/09

I think that’s when I went out to water the garden. And that’s kind of how my week/weekend went, although I did manage to get out and water plants again on Sunday. And on Friday I went to see my brother’s new home.

Along with the watering one day, I deadheaded all the rosebushes, except the one by the deck. Altogether, with that bit of extra, the watering took five hours each day! It’s partly because our whole backyard is sort of a pot, itself. We’re about ten feet above our back neighbor, held up by a cement block wall. I imagine there’s a lot of rock and cement rubble below our topsoil (which isn’t exactly topsoil other than it’s on top). The bushes along the fence atop that wall dry out too fast and I need to replace the soaker hose. And I haven’t watered them enough this summer, so it took a while. We have more hundred degree days coming, too.

I was wondering when keeping the PNW green will be outweighed by keeping the PNW population adequately hydrated. Probably not in my lifetime. We don’t have any water restrictions this summer, so far, but the drying trend is there and will continue unless we can stop global warming.

On the next cool-enough day I’ll tackle the big deck climber rose, and probably include trimming it back a little. I’m also a bit excited that we’ve ordered a small power saw to cut limbs with. Last winter’s ice storm left our arborvitae bent over. Even where it bent is probably taller than it needs to be. The lilacs need to cut by a third. The camellia and elderberry branches are also too big to cut with hand pruners.

What I’m really looking forward to is cutting out the cherry or English laurel (that I previously thought might be huckleberry) that has grown up under the neighbor’s cedar. Laurel makes a beautiful hedge, but when left to grow wild it seeds prolifically and we’re constantly pulling out seedlings. And this specific laurel (which was one of those seedlings) has started to impinge on my pear tree. I love the cedar tree, but it needs to be trimmed as well. It has also reached my little pear tree.

Cedars are so ginormous! The laurel leans to the pear tree because it’s under the cedar. The cedar stands straight. It’s branches simply reach to the pear. My pear tree is about ten feet from the neighbor’s fence. Based on where in their yard the tree grows, I’d guess it’s at least twenty feet from trunk to trunk, maybe more. That makes the base of the tree forty-feet-plus wide! Beautifully ginormous! I think it would fill more than half my back yard, north to south, reaching well beyond both house and fence, east to west.

When we moved here sixteen years ago the cedar was nowhere near our yard. You can see the laurel in the lower left of the top photo and between the pear tree and the shed in the lower photo.