I
have talked about (a) before. It is all
of the cutting back of perennial plants that I don’t do pre-winter because the
sterile-standing-stems provide shelter for the birds and “add visual interest”
to the otherwise barren coldest season.
But mainly it is because not clearing the landscape seems to be sending
a message to Mother Nature, but mostly to myself, that in the garden it is
never really over – there is always more work to be done.
Jason
(b) really will be here soon. And some
of what I would like to be doing right now is admittedly labor that he could be
doing when he arrives on the scene with his industrial strength leaf blowers
and big-bed pickup truck – that is to say the removal of last year’s leaves
from our various perennial beds. I
rationalize however – perhaps wrongly but who cares – that the little incipient
buds, which have lain dormant under this bed of intrusive mulch for the past
several months, would burst forth in flower much sooner and more healthy if
they were exposed to as much spring sunlight is available as soon as possible. Hence my diligent and gentle wisk-raking –
some of which goes into my backyard compost bin, and some onto the lawn to be
removed by Jason.
This
past weekend a portion of our yard was dry enough to do both (a) and (b) in the
bed that was formerly our shade garden and now – after the unfortunately
necessary removal of several trees – is now our blistering hot sun plot.
When
I finished I looked up into the nearby micro-forest of Rose of Sharon ((Hibiscus
syriacus) that has spontaneously sprouted in this newly sunlit environment and
pretty quickly spotted (c).
One
of the pricker bushes, which a previous owner had planted as a border guard
against his neighbor on the south, had a death grip on the largest of our newly
arrived, non-violent Hibiscus bushes.
This hostile treatment called for an equally hostile response. I retrieved my trusty Japanese pruning saw
and forty-five minutes and an equal number of thorny branches later I was done.
Getting
into the spring mood really is as easy as (a), (b), (c).
