Hard work in the garden

Thirteen or so years ago when we moved into this house, we did a lot of planting of shrubs and whatnot…one of the plants was an orange honeysuckle plant. The flowers looked really nice. The thing is, I know that it’s not an ideal plant. I remember very well how my parents spent weeks clearing the honeysuckle from along the creek bed that ran behind our house. It was literally choking trees. I’m not quite sure how closely related this variety is, but the flowers are quite similar, aside from the color. We planted two of these shrubs and one of them has turned into a monster while the other one has had rather modest growth over the years.

Last week I decided it was time to clear out the garden space next to the kitchen and at the end of the carport area. The honeysuckle had offshoots all the way up to the driveway and I spent much of Friday and Saturday clearing that out. By the time I had gotten most of it out, I decided the honeysuckle will have to go. It’s just going to keep being a problem and better to do it now than allow it to become worse of a nightmare.

And a nightmare it is, because the roots are so entrenched in places I don’t know how they will come out. I’ve manage to clear most of the roots from the original area but there are some running under a picket fence to the backyard. The ones from the original plant must be ten times worse. I may need a decent saw before I finish.  It’s a nasty business.

The good news is we bought several strawberry plants and I put them into a long box planter today. I was going to do a raised bed in the area next to the kitchen but opted for the boxes since we may need to rearrange things in the near future. The other good news is that I have gotten heaps of exercise from all the gardening work. I find this far more satisfying than doing exercise for the sake of exercise.