Ungardening

Haha. If there is one thing you should worry about, it's me with a chainsaw! So as part of my uber-cool urban trendy life, I've spent a lot of time gardening lately, or should that be ungardening.

Mostly I really like my garden. Whoever planted it did, however, have a bit of a fetish for conifers, which I'm not so big on myself. And I'm especially not big on them when they are planted absurdly close to the path down to the house and pruned back into ano ugly sort of hedgish shape. And when they're prickly conifers. I started ungardening them in the first couple of weeks after moving in before bringing the pinball machine down. I was quite shocked to discover the size of the trunks within. People had been attempting to tame the wild tree within for a looooonnnnng time. Suffice it to say, I now have a good pile of firewood.

You can see two of the main offenders in this picture, helpfully marked "X"



And having cut them down, I discover that hiding behind them are some rather more attractive plants AND I don't have the feeling of being claustrobic walking down the path. Also note the plant at the very end of the path. It's a pittosporum (which may in fact be said pi-TOSS-porum, rather than PIT-o-sporum, but then I'd have to find a resident Latin/Botany geek... oh wait....), and I'm rather a fan. However, this model, a native, is good for 9m, and about 3m high. Conveniently, it's planted about 10cm from the edge of the path. I haven't had the heart to ungarden it yet, but it's one that I'd replace, unlike Mr Prickly Conifer.

We had some more heavy rain as well, and I find my grapefruit tree keeled over yesterday. My Two Dollar Shope ratchet ties are currently holding it in a more, er, erect fashion until I get some stakes later today.

Also, I think sometime in the near future I'm going to expand this tunnel (which is looking down toward same corner in earlier photo.