{"id":305,"date":"2012-04-30T06:57:11","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T14:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=305"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:33","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:33","slug":"twenty-two-days-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/twenty-two-days-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Twenty-Two Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hedge
\n<\/strong>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>The four garden chores I dislike the most are pruning, hedging, edging and mulching.\u00a0 For the next twenty-two days until the Garden Tour, I will be spending hours on all three.\u00a0 Other gardeners might add weeding to that list, but I find it relaxing to pull weeds.\u00a0 We have lots of weeds, so under any other circumstances I would be very relaxed by Tour Day.
\nOur mature holly trees are a major challenge.\u00a0 I have always loved all the symbolism associated with holly.\u00a0 Sacred to ancient Druids, Romans, and Christians, it has all kinds of mystical meanings – good luck, fertility, evil spirit deterrence and symbol of Christ’s suffering.\u00a0 This does not make the trees easier to prune and shape.\u00a0 In fact, considering the elbow grease that I will expend on the hollies over the next few weeks, it seems to me that our three large trees should bring better and more consistent luck.\u00a0 To be fair, if the hollies could speak they would probably describe the multitude of evils forestalled since we moved into this house thirteen years ago.
\nWhat the hollies do bring is birds–lots of them.\u00a0 Each tree is a veritable bird condo, with several species in residence at any one time.\u00a0 Cardinals nest in them.\u00a0 Sparrows use them as hiding places during storms and blue jays perch on the top branches and pontificate raucously to the world.\u00a0 \u00a0We have both male and female trees, and their bee-assisted hanky-panky results in lots of berried branches for holiday decorations.
\nHollies tend to root wherever the branches touch down, so I try to keep mine limbed up. “Try” is the operative word.\u00a0 A few drooping branches have evaded my efforts, so now I will have to crawl through an accumulation of dried, but still prickly leaves to get to those wayward limbs. \u00a0Since I will already be in considerable pain, I will also eliminate the thorny wild blackberry canes that have already begun to wend their way up through the holly branches.\u00a0 I tolerate a few each year for the sake of the tasty berries, but this year there are way too many of them.\u00a0 If I can straighten up after trimming and discarding the branches and canes beneath the hollies, I will also shape them, with special emphasis on branches that droop over pathways and shade planting areas.\u00a0 There are plenty of those.\u00a0 Garden visitors tend to get testy when they are smacked in the face by rebellious holly branches.
\nOnce the holly is respectable and all prickle-related injuries have been treated, I will bring in the heavy artillery–the electric hedge clipper–to take care of the privet, which bounds the front of the property on three sides.\u00a0 The big problem with our privet–aside from its tendency to grow at an excessive rate–is access.\u00a0 On the south side of the property, the hedge abuts the neighbors’ driveway.\u00a0 Clipping the driveway side means doing it from the driveway, preferably at a time when it is empty.\u00a0\u00a0 Unfortunately, whenever I am ready to do the job, the neighbors are ready to settle in at home, with all three of their vehicles parked near the hedge.\u00a0 \u00a0I don’t want flying privet clippings to scratch their cars, so I bide my time.\u00a0 However, the day is coming when I will simply have to ask them to park in the street for an hour or so.\u00a0 That piece of hedging is the hardest to clip because it is the tallest.\u00a0 It will be a great relief to get it done.
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nYou may wonder why I just don’t hire someone to do the pruning and trimming; a question that I ask myself often, especially when I am on my knees under the holly trees.\u00a0 The answer is simple–economics.\u00a0 My garden budget is finite and tour preparation is expensive.\u00a0 Gardens get hungry before garden tours and they eat mulch at an astonishing rate.\u00a0 Slaking that hunger costs lots of money.\u00a0 Inevitably there will be gaps in the established plantings that will require filling with specimens purchased at the last minute from various vendors.\u00a0 If I spend money on professional pruners and trimmers now, my garden, starved for lack of mulch, will retaliate by sprouting enormous weeds with six foot-long roots.\u00a0 If I ask my husband to do the trimming, he may well respond by pulling up his roots and moving out.\u00a0 Taking all these outcomes into consideration, I have decided that the most cost effective way to get the garden ready is to do these hateful jobs myself.\u00a0 In the evenings I take Tylenol with a hot tea chaser and read self help books to elevate my attitude about the whole thing.
\nI imagine the day–just three weeks away now–when it will all look wonderful.\u00a0 The days in between will require a leap of faith, but as long as I have pain meds, power tools and a knee brace, I should be able to make it comfortably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The four garden chores I dislike the most are pruning, hedging, edging and mulching.\u00a0 For the next twenty-two days until the Garden Tour, I will be spending hours on all three.\u00a0 Other gardeners might add weeding to that list, but I find it relaxing to pull weeds.\u00a0 We have lots of weeds, so under … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1489,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions\/1489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}