Submitted by Sandie Griego on Sun, 12/02/2012 - 19:16
This being the weekend of December 1st and 2nd, one might think it would be too cold to spend much time outside. Saturday was spend tearing apart an overgrown flowerbed. This flowerbed is located outside of our master bathroom tub window. When we moved into the house, it had no landscaping in the back yard. I had clear glass placed in the window over the tub, with plans to create a beautiful flowerbed. I placed an arch in the flowerbed, planted a wisteria in the middle.
Once it grew, It was beautiful for a short time, then turned into green leaves, I wanted something flowering on the arch also. I planted a passion vine. The passion vine dies back to the ground in the winter. It gives time for the wisteria to bloom before it overtakes the arch with greenery and the most outstanding flowers. The flowerbed also has two knockout rose bushes and perennial bedding plants. The passion vine would grow over the arch, the rose bushes, the bedding plants, and attract beautiful butterflies. The arch was suffering from the weight of all of the plants until the poor thing was leaning at a 45 degree angle. Time for a new arch.
I spent Saturday morning pulling all the tangled passion vines off the arch. I then got to the overgrown knockout roses. All of this had to be cut down into small enough sections to fit into the paper recycle bags so the city could pick them up to be composted. My hubby come to the rescue with his Saws All saw to cut the arch apart. It is now in 3 sections and small enough to place in our trailer to take to the dump. Sunshine is now flooding into our bathroom without all of the plants outside the window. The weather was outstanding.
Sunday afternoon continued to be a beautiful day. I started this afternoon with raking leaves in the front yard. We have two Sweet Gum trees in the front yard. This is the first year that the leaves have covered our grass and blown over to our neighbors yard.
I raked up the leaves and placed them on the top of my compost pile. There are still plenty of leaves on the tree so, weather permitting, I may get to rake again. The rest of the day was spent trimming more rose bushes in another flowerbed. These buses make huge beautiful pink roses. They had overgrown to the point, I was getting concerned for my window screens. I filled two more of the big paper recycle bags. Again, the weather stayed beautiful.
Now to plan out the flowerbed again. We will need to replace the arch in the spring. Increase the size of the flowerbed or not? How long will this warm weather last?