dirty and may be a bit smelly....

I've been working in the yard, off and on all day. Would get out there and dig, chop, whack, pull, snatch, up-root for a while till I got so hot I'd think' I've had too much fun out here.' So I go in the houseand drink some water. Think cool thoughts, maybe stretch out on the cool tile floor and plot my next move. Then when I thought "I'm ready" - I'd get up, drink more water, put on my gloves and wobble back out.

Sadly, as usual, nothing really shows. I don't seem to have the foresight to take the 'before' photo, so the 'after' really isn't impressive. Only me is the one who knows how hard I worked, and how it looked like before I got started with the digging and lopping. All I can say at this point is you'll have to come before the city trash truck comes by on Thursday morning. To see that big pile of trash I have generated since last Thursday a.m,. that will demonstrate how much smilax I have rooted out, and how many limbs I have picked up and how whacked back the azaleas are.

One of the things I'd been wanting to get done is to cut back dead and broken limbs out of the amazingly prolific blueberry bush. Plus cut down the one that is so miserly it appeared to have died back in the spring. So determined to not be productive, it decided it would rather decease than produce a few small, undernourished blueberries. But when I went out with the loppers, to cut it all down, I discovered several small new sprouts coming up in the general vicinity of the dead bush. Guess I need to reconsider/take back all those disparaging remarks about the bush that was determined it would not be productive, and hope that it will be a bit more generous when the little shoots get big enough to bear.

I know practically nothing about growing  blueberries, but it appears that the original 'mother' plant must die out after sending out runners that put up other stalks to turn into bushes and regenerate? That's what it appears like with the bush I thought was gone. But with half a dozen little ones coming up six to ten inches away from the original - maybe I was too hasty in my critical remarks referencing Failure to Thrive.  Also cut back some invasive runners of honeysuckle that would probably strangle the bushes if left to their own devices. Like anyone who has been raised in the south has heard about risky behavior when you go to sleep with the window open, and kudzu is creeping across the yard....

So that's my report for Labor Day, 2013. Did you know Labor Day was originally intended as a day of respite for Union workers? Me neither, until a read an article in the paper that made me google it up.