The Yard Work Begins!

First a quick update on Mollie Kitty!  She is doing somewhat better, though not cured.  Tests show that she has a pseudocyst or abscess on her pancreas.  Treatment is very expensive and the success rate negligible, so I've decided against any surgery for her.  I brought her home a week ago, and she is eating again, seems happy and pain free and nearly back to being her normal self again.  She's getting lots of loving!   

With a wedding to take place in my back yard in July, there is MUCH to be done!  I've been working at it bit by bit with my kids, but it was finally time to bring the professionals in.  Since I moved in, this big old cottonwood stump has been one of my big frustrations in the back yard.  Along with all the overgrown and weedy shrubs in inconvenient places, not to mention the seedling Chinese elm trees that seem to spring up EVERYWHERE and grow like crazy!

Bright and early this morning, the tree service showed up with their stump grinder and went to work!  Fascinating to watch this piece of machinery eat through a huge stump with seemingly little effort!  

They made short work of the stump and all those miscellaneous shrubs and saplings!  Amazing how much larger the yard looks now!  

At the side of the driveway there was a hedge of weedy looking elderberries and chinese elm.  I liked the hedge there as it gives privacy from the road on the right, but the trees were so old that it always looked bad and the chinese elms had such a hold that I could not keep them out.  

First they cut them all down, and then they came in with the stump grinder and removed all the roots!  They also "discovered" a ten foot long section of steel pipe that wasn't attached to anything.  I'm grateful that no one was hurt when it went flying!  I suspect it had been there since the house was built in 1941.  

Much neater now!  I will create a bed here with landscape timber edges and then plant some lilacs, which my yard is sadly devoid of.

In another corner of the back yard, you can see where I've painted the shed (the same colors that the house will be) and built two tuteurs for the garden beds.  The sprinkler guy was here this weekend and fixed the drip sprinkler system that runs through the beds! You can also see the huge weedy clump of trees by the shed, so thick that you couldn't tell what was growing there.  Turned out to be at least 5 or 6 different shrubs and trees packed into that little bed.  Maybe more.  

Now the bed by the shed is all neat and clean and I can get it properly fixed and ready for some plants.  The garden beds are coming along.  The right one has most of my herbs in it as well as delphinium, hollyhocks and hopefully some sweet peas that will grow up the tuteur!  What a joy it was to spend the afternoon in the garden getting my hands dirty, and then tucking a few plants in and getting them watered in.  The drip system only runs three times a week, so I settled the new plants and seeds in with the sprinkler for a while.  

Tomorrow, I hope to get the second bed cleaned up and ready for some new plants.  It already has some tiny delphiniums and daisies that I had planted in the fall.  They are a bit slow starting with our cool spring.  

That large clump to the right is a lovely patch of rhubarb!  It's not in the best spot, but I haven't yet figured out where a better spot would be, so I've left it there for now.  The nice thing about working in the garden, is seeing when something is ready to be picked!  A handful of bright red and green rhubarb stalks came into the kitchen with me when I was done playing in the dirt!

It might seem like a silly thing, but I felt like I found a part of me that has been missing today.  The part that is a gardening, making good things to eat in the kitchen part of me.  The part of me that doesn't need a computer or cell phone to be happy.   Ever since I sold my last house way back in 2004, I've been missing this part of me.  It's so good to have it back!  

The chives are just about to burst into bloom and there is plenty of mint ready to use as well!

I made an old fashioned Rhubarb Pudding with the rhubarb!  So tasty!  That was my dinner tonight!

At the end of the day, I had a Dark N' Stormy ~ my favorite summer drink!  Best when drunk on the patio after a long day of working outside, especially if you have friends to sit and chat with!  I didn't have friends with me tonight, but it was nice to sit and look out at all that had been accomplished in the course of the day!  

In all, the tree service spent six hours at my house and in that time they took out 4 dead aspen trees, removed a large broken branch in the maple tree, removed countless chinese elms and ground out stumps and roots in at least half a dozen different spots!  It's so nice to see things getting neatened up!