Happy St. Patrick's Day to you.
I'll be spending this day recovering from yesterday's yard work.
I don't know what piddly chore started it, but I spent the entire day digging, pulling, and dragging, and I'm a mite "stove up" (as the old folks used to say).
Some time around mid-morning, I looked at this area and decided it was time to do something about it.
It's hard to see in the photograph, but this is the area where last year's tornado took out a huge sweet gum tree. It was growing in a thicket with 4 other sweet gums; we had them all cut down. What used to be in dense shade now gets mid-day sun. (I'm hoping that the daylilies growing at the edge of the thicket - that green swath above the stumps- will now get enough sunlight to bloom.) All of the trees were hollow; all of the stumps have holes where stuff could be planted, and there's a big hole directly in the center of the stumps where the roots of the fallen tree came out of the ground.
I stood at the top of the hill pondering what I should do in this area, and eventually decided that it needed a couple of hydrangeas. I test-dug a couple of holes (wasn't sure I could get through all the tree roots!) and went to the nursery. This is a pop-up nursery that opens from March through October, trucking in plants from their main greenhouse 20 miles away. They had their "soft opening" Friday, and if they had a big variety of hydrangeas when they opened, they'd sold them by Saturday, when I was there. They only had two hydrangeas of a lace-top cultivar that I already have; I wanted mop-heads.
The plan changed as I shopped the remaining plants. I came home with a "Leopard Plant" and a French Pink Pussy Willow. The willow went into the sunnier area to the left of the stumps. The Leopard Plant is to the right. They are both planted at the mouths of little ditches that run down to the pond. In the hole in front of the stumps, I planted a "Storm Cloud" amsonia. For the holes in the stumps, I got creeping sedum, a sweet potato vine, and some purple-leaf vine whose name I can't recall at the moment. I will fill in with other stuff as it becomes available. The English daisies sprouting in the cold frame should do well there.
The Husband was busy around the yard, too, picking up sticks and limbs and hauling them to the gully. Then, to my utter disbelief, he started hacking on the Snuffaluffagus that lives in our back yard.
In other posts, I've written about the English ivy that has taken over the trees at the edge of the gully. Last fall, in rapid succession, several trees fell. This is what we're looking at now. It was even thicker yesterday, before we started hacking on it. Beneath all that ivy are tree trunks a foot in diameter. It's going to take more than one day to tame this mess.
When we gave up on Snuffy, we tackled the fire ant hills that have reappeared along Nanny's driveway and in her yard. I sprinkled the "mound destroyer," and The Husband came behind me with the watering can. We doctored about a dozen mounds, including two in the vegetable garden plot. I don't like to use poison, but I also don't like to be eaten up by fire ants while I'm trying to pick cucumbers.
We finished with the ant hills and came home. I sat down in my recliner for a few minutes, and every joint in my body locked up. A hot shower, a little dinner, and I was in the sack by 9:00.
It's cool and overcast today, and I am not at all tempted to work in the yard again.
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