Attack of the pruning landlord and other horror stories!

Last Saturday I got all my little tender plants happily planted out in their new homes. Then on Sunday my landlord came over to mow and trim bushes.  He is OBSESSIVE about trimming any stray bit of vegetation from the neighbor's yards that dares to grow over the fence.  He brought over this monster hedge trimmer and went to town in the backyard.  And guess where all the trimmings went?  Yep, right into my freshly planted planters full of tiny and delicate plants.  Argh!!!!!!!

As it turned out, everything was ok, but I almost lost it as I watched him dropping huge chunks of Jasmine into my planters.  At least I was able to rush out and clean up the planters so nothing got pulled up as they cleaned up all the trimmings.

One thing I was really pleased about was the pruning job he did on the Wisteria bush.  It is now a tree rather than a big ugly bush!  I have a total love/hate relationship with that thing.  It isn't planted in a place where it can actually do it's thing, which is climb.  It is planted as a specimen shrub along the back fence.  Which means it needs to be pruned into some kind of shape.  I don't know what to do with it and I hate to go whacking away at it, since I didn't plant it.  It is really pretty for about 3 weeks in the spring when it blooms, then just sits there for the rest of the year.  And it loses it's leaves in the winter.  And there was an ugly trellis jammed in it that wasn't doing anything to support it.  It was really unattractive in the winter with no leaves and this trellis jammed in it at a strange angle.  Once the landlord reshaped it I was able to get the trellis out of it.  Yay!

Wisteria Tree!

And it opened up so much space that I was able to get another planter along the back fence!

New planter (with ugly trellis)

Hmmm...now what to plant in the new planter?  I just stuck the trellis in it for a place to put it.

The rest of my plants are doing pretty well.  I'm sure they would be happier if I watered them more, but I have such a hard time standing there with a hose and watering them.  I planted some sunflower seeds in one of them and they actually didn't get eaten and are starting to come up.  A few of the other smaller plants either got nibbled on, dried out, or got damaged by the pruning incident, and gave up the ghost.  I haven't lost too much though.

Speaking of things getting nibbled on, that darn gopher in the front yard got another rose bush!  When I redid the front bed, I moved the 2 surviving rose bushes.  One of them had too much root to fit in a gopher cage, so I just planted it and hoped for the best.  Well, the gopher found it.

See the hole between the 2 lily plants?  Used to be a rosebush.

I have a bad feeling he is working on one of the big purple bushes in the back too.  One of them looks pretty sad.  The nice thing is that at least things grow fast here, so if I have to replace something it doesn't take years to grow back.

I've been working on the other flower bed in the front too.  First off, my landlords planted waaaay too many things in it.  And some of them got waaaay bigger than they are supposed to to, so it was a really crowded.  Then over the winter a bunch of the lavender bushes died.  And some stuff got dug up with the mailbox got replaced last year.  So, I've been collecting lavender plants and replacing them.

The gaps are where things have died

3 new shrubs along the fence and 2 new lavender plants

The idea in the this bed is that the shrubs will grow into a 6 ft hedge and screen our driveway from the road.  There are 3 pear trees in there also that were totally overgrown by lavender bushes, which aren't supposed to get anywhere close to the size of these.  I have no idea why they are so huge.  It's not like they get a lot of water or anything.  I do like being able to see the trees, so I am intentionally leaving gaps in the lavender and pruning them back so they don't over run the trees again. Now if I can just get my landlord to leave them alone with the hedge trimmer...