Mike and I spent the morning clearing the wood out of the pasture with tall grass, two full trailers of branches. The tree contractor cleared the branches out of the corporation yard and off the driveway, another trailer full.
Despite all odds, the camellia in the front border garden is flourishing – minimal topsoil, intense sun and a drip unlikely to give it sufficient water to survive. The irrigation line in that section of the garden has three bubblers. I directed all three onto the camellia. I scratched out the land around the camellia, soaked it and applied the last of a bag of mulch. Oxalis appears to be the invasive weed of choice in this section of the garden. We will see if digging out and mulching discourages it at all.
I moved the frog to peek out from under a fortnight lily in the front border garden. He seemed happier there. Quite a nice stone frog actually. The cultivated gardens around the house have three of the four elements of a traditional Chinese garden: stone, wood and handcrafts. Water too if you include the fire prevention pond.
I pruned both potato shrubs to force inner growth to make them bushier. Spots appears to be partial to potato shrub. The potato shrub in the upper border garden is growing much faster than its counterpart in the triangle garden, perhaps because it is well-established enough to take full advantage the full sun on the east side of the house. The potato shrub, camellia and not so dwarf oleander are all huge and take up almost that entire 30 foot long section of the upper border garden.
A Year at the Snake 