Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Me vs The Tree

When I became a homeowner about 18 years ago, my house did not come with a whole lot of shade trees.  Previous owners had planted trees, most of which were along the back fence, so they didn't provide much in the way of shade for the west-facing side of the house.  So I planted some trees.

One of those trees is a purple robe locust.  It's a nice enough tree that has lovely purple bloom clusters in the spring (they look rather like wisteria blooms).  I'd seen examples around town & thought it would be nice to have in the yard.

What I didn't know is that locust trees have a bad habit of sending up little offshoots - all over the place.  Most of the time I just prune them down to the ground until they give up.  However, there's one that's insinuated itself into part of the fence.  Which makes it very hard to get it cut back down to ground level.  I'm trying, but so far that particular shoot seems to be gaining on me.

I do feel sorry for my neighbors, they've had any number of shoots come up on their side of the fence.  I did notice a while back that they seemed to have cut down all that were readily noticed.  And I say, go for it!

I did do some rather severe pruning of the 'fence shoot' today.  I'll need to keep on top of it, if I let it get out of control it could turn into another 'Audrey' (feed me).

The things you learn when you're no longer a renter!

Papillon

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