My Big Backyard - Then and Now

Nothing is more in your face that looking out a window at your garden and seeing one of the local trio of bunnies looking back at you with a huge petunia in his mouth.

I'm looking for flowers to plant that need little or no maintenance, that come up every year, that flower in many colors all summer long, and which are distasteful to wildlife.

Squirrels, rabbits, moles - and now the leaves of the ever-blooming, hardiest rose bushes are being eaten by something taller, or something able to fly.

On the other hand, some of the healthiest green stuff growing around the house is coming up through pebbles and between flagstones in the driveway. How can that be right?

I pruned the rose bushes for the second time. It did not take long after the first prune a few months ago to see the unevenness of my efforts as one after another of the branches or arms of the bush pushed out awkwardly from the oval shape I had planned. There seems to be more science and skill to that whole thing than I had imagined.

This morning I saw, in the street, in many pieces, one of the the petunia-eating bunnies from the back yard. Poetic justice.

I wrote the above post a few weeks ago and sat on it to see if my feelings for my big backyard might change. It has not.

Now, though, instead of neatly trimmed ever blooming rose bushes, without the constant monitoring of the clippers, they have dwarfed me in height, with errant branches filled with blooms in most stages of beauty stick out like arms on a scarecrow with the dead and dying blossoms lifting their heads up to the sun alongside the tiny new buds.Apparently whatever was munching on the bushes has moved on.

The morning glories are snaking their way up the bird feeder and up the mailbox. They will have to be cut back because they scare the birds into thinking something predatory is waiting in the leaves to pounce on them.

It's not a good look. The only saving grace is that the windows are getting so dirty that most of the yard is a blur. And that's what I think about it.