my neighbors must love me

This is what I did with my Saturday.

When I bought my house, the only thing that separated my yard from the busy street I live next to was a line of ligustrum bushes. I hate ligustrum because it smells bad and constantly needs to be pruned, but it does provide a nice buffer from the street noise. My father would come over faithfully twice a year to help trim back the bushes. Then we put up a fence (conveniently exiling the ligustrum to the street side) and I have proceeded to ignore it ever since.

Unfortunately, the ligustrum does not like to be forgotten and has been reminding me of its presence this spring by growing over my fence. It has also decided to share the seemingly immortal Virginia creeper vines that live within its branches by allowing them to grow between the cracks of the fence. If there is one thing I hate more than ligustrum, it's Virginia creeper vines. All summer long I am constantly pulling them off of everything -- the house, the fence, other plants. Those suckers are quick.

So this year I decided to kill two birds with one stone: severely trim back the ligustrum to stop it from growing over the fence and pull out the Virginia creeper vines tied up in its branches. I figured if I took care of it now, it'll save me lots of time and energy this summer. I recruited my father to help by promising to haul away anything he cut. The ligustrum was the easy part. Then we hit the palm tree that hadn't been trimmed since I bought the house and a huge mess of various tangled vines, including some with really sharp thorns. We got through the big stuff before we called it a day. I still need to go back and trim the little branches we missed and pull out the Virginia creeper vines -- yuck.

It took another hour after cutting to haul all the branches to the curb and cut them to legal pick-up size. My neighbors must shake their heads every time they pass these giant piles I leave by the curb. I already know the yard trash guys hate me.

More garden pictures and a craft update to come. Maybe I'll even get around to that spring training post...