Gray day

It was a gray day.  Windy.  Old man winter does not want to yield.
More rain predicted for tomorrow afternoon.  I'm breaking out the ark building supplies.

I noticed that the wild rose is putting out leaves.   :)  The Knockout roses are still dormant.
I have a mounding wild rose in the side yard.  Shortly after we moved in,  I noticed two little rose leaves in the grass.  I marked them and asked  ( told? ) G. not to mow there.  As the rosebush grew I assumed it was a climbing rose.  So I erected a trellis and did my best to tame it into growing on the trellis.  Espellier at its' finest!  Yeah.  Not so much.  After some research,  I determined that I have what is known as a mounding rose.  I am wasting my time trying to train it onto a trellis.  This baby is like Macy Gray's hair:  it has a mind of its' own.   Allowing it to mound into its' natrual form and tenacious pruning has kept in a shape we can live with.  Seriously, it started taking over the yard at one point.  I let it mound out of bounds and it just plain took over.  Last fall, for the second season in a row, I pruned it back right after Halloween.  I'm hoping it will bloom for me this season.  Certainly, I know it will sprawl everywhere.  It's like The Little Shop of Horrors.  Rose canes flying off in all directions, bowing down across the fence line and into the public walkway that borders our yard.  Which means the city will come along at some point in the growing season WITH A WEEDWHACKER, thank you very much, and lop it back if I don't keep it contained.  Poor thing has endured some butchering in the past.  It cheerfully comes back every spring and forms little white apple blossom-esque roses.  It is truly a wild rose and most people would probably call it a weed, whack it off at the beginning and be done with it.  Not this kid.  If it lives and flourishes I try to work with it.  I know I wear on G's nerves and the nerves of my neighbors with my staunch protection of the "overgrown" ( G's words ) landscape.  I should probably bite the bullet and be more austere.  I just can't quite bring myself to have a manicured, suburban, cookie cutter landscape. 

In our first home the same exact thing happened with a rose.  I noticed rose leaves in the grass and took it on as a pet project.   Turns out it, too, was a moundng rose.  It had medium sized burgundy blooms in the springtime.  I think it's neat that both properties have yielded volunteer roses for us.  With the first house I'm sure it was a planting that a former owner had tried to cut back.  With this property it's just a wild rose hip that got dropped by a bird.  Must've been a landscape designing bird.  The rose is right against the fence.  But I guess that would come with a bird being perched on the fence.  At any rate!  I love my wild rose.

Back to our Garden of Eden, the front of the house is surrounded by evergreen shrubs ( Leland Cypress, maybe? ).  When we bought the house the shrubs were maybe three or four feet high.  Our lot is oddly situated in that the house is in the middle of a hillside.  There is the street level, the driveway slopes down to the site of the house and then the yard drops off to the back.  There is a concrete retaining wall which affords us about ten feet of turf right behind the house.  Which is, of course, shaded by the house so it is pretty much mossy back there.  I'm flying afield, though.  Because of the topography, the living room windows are just about at eye level with the street.  This means that anyone driving into the cul-de-sac at night will be shining their headlights right into our living room.  Yes, I'm aware of something called draperies and blinds.  I'm just not too big of a fan of them for a multitude of reasons.  So, anyway, the hedge at the front provides some privacy.  After twenty years, the hedge is taller than I am.  Neighbors have suggested to G. that we tear out the hedge.  What??   The house can't be seen, they opine.  Half the house is readily visible from the street.  I don't like the idea of tearing out the shrubs because they are so established, it would mean completely re-landscaping the front and, personally, I like the privacy.  I can be out working in the front part of the yard and nobody knows I'm there   :)  The summer before last, I took loppers in hand and Bonsaied the hedge.  I was inspired by neighbors who live near MIL.  The bottom of the shrubs are bare and the branches provide a sculptural element.  The top was left natural.  G. just gives them a haircut once a year.  I love the look.  And if nobody else wants to look on it, well, God made your head so that it swivels on your shoulders.  Just look the other way is all I can say.  I'm keeping my sculptured hedge.