A Shrubbery and the Knights that Say Ni

After two years, we finally have our shrubbery. When someone tries to come into our yard, we stand there and say, “None shall pass.” Well, that part is not true. Even with the shrubbery, the neighbor’s kids are constantly coming into our yard. Our neighbor is mortified by it, but I do not mind. I actually like having the kids around while I am working. They are two and five.

There are no pictures of how horrible this side of the yard ever looked. I was sure that there must be photographic proof somewhere, but I have spent a couple of hours now searching for evidence and have come up empty-handed. All I have is this picture of the back yard before I moved in.

The bush on the far left is a pricker bush. It looked good in the summer, but it was a deciduous and very naked in the winter. What looks like another large bush to the right of the pricker bush is actually two different kinds of bushes. I am not sure what either of them are, but one of them has these gorgeous pink blossoms every spring.

The bushes were out of control and there was a vine strangling everything and threatening to kill it all. There was a rhododendron dying underneath the mess that took me two years to find. The pricker bush was eating it alive.

The rhodedendron does not look so great, but I am hoping that it will come back now that the pricker bush is gone. That is right. Last week, we did away with that monster forever. First, Douglas chopped it up with a long-handled pruning saw.

The stump was harder to remove. We had to buy a cable puller.

Douglas did this late one evening after work, so the pictures are dark. You can see the half-dead rhododendron in the back.

The tree was too close in the end, so we had to pull up the truck and use the bumper. Thank goodness for our F150.

After removing the bush, we also had to take out a large rock that was half-buried underneath. I keep saying “we” as if I did anything other than take pictures. This was all Douglas.

This weekend, we finished what had been a two-year project to put some better-looking bushes along that side of the yard. Two years ago, I bought one hundred privet hedges. In the catalog it stated that they were between two and three feet. When I got them, the sticks were barely over a foot. The company was not helpful in the least. After several phone calls, they sent me a voucher for next to nothing.  I was angry and vowed to never give that company more business, even if that meant that I did not get a cent back for any of the bushes. I threw away the voucher.

The pathetic little twigs that they had sent me were then planted in the middle of the yard. The side of the yard does not get much sun, and I was afraid they would die if planted there as frail as they were. My plan was to eventually have a raised garden bed in the sunny center of the yard, so I planted the privet there for the first summer.

Last spring we dug up most of the bushes and planted them along the side of the yard. I could not convince Douglas to take out the pricker bush yet, so we did not put any there. He liked how that big bush blocked more of the view of the neighbor’s parking lot. I hoped that once the privet got bigger, he would not be as adverse to removing large pricker bush.

We also planted privet in front of the shed we built in 2010. For the most part, I did that just because we had so many bushes that I was unsure where to put them all, but I think they add something to the back. It will look even better as they grow larger. That bench was one that Douglas pulled out of the trash. I am rubbing off on him! Repairing it is on my million project list of things I need to/ want to do around the house and yard.

We left a row of bushes on the north side of the new raised garden that we built. Those were the bushes that I eventually planned to plant where the pricker bush was. I am getting sick of calling it a pricker bush, but I do not know what kind of bush it was.

Last weekend, as I stated earlier, we finally finished the plan. Once the stickler was gone, we just had to dig up the privets and plant them along the property line. Douglas my studly husband dug the holes.

I dug up the bushes and replanted them. I would show you a picture of the digging up, but Douglas only took pictures of my behind. Never trust a man with a camera.

We put some grass seed down, and now all we can do is water and wait. Hopefully, this shrubbery will grow to epic proportions and block the view of the cement on the other side.

I am pleased with how it looks so far.

If I had more money, I would have bought mature bushes that would have filled in this area quickly. However, part of me likes the anticipation of what it will look like in the end after years of plotting and execution. That is our vegetable garden where the privet used to be. Hopefully this year it will produce lots of vegetables instead. My favorite addition to the yard is that cute little black dog.

Now we are the knights that say, “Ekke Ekke Ekke Ekke Ptangya Ziiinnggggggg Ni.” We love our shrubbery! By the way, if you did not get either of the knights references, go watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail and thank me later.

Do not forget to enter the raffle for the scarf hangers. You have until tomorrow at noon.

Happy Homemaking!