Too early to plant but work to be done!

I have discovered that my husband of many years has an electric hedge trimmer.  This is an awesome piece of equipment and I think everyone should have one!

Really this has all the fun of chain saw motion with much less danger involved and smaller limbs so it doesn't fight you as much.  I had been mentioning fairly often in recent days that the honeysuckle probably hadn't been trimmed in 10 years or so and if he got out the electric hedge trimmer I would go to work on them.  ('mentioning fairly often' is that thing that men call nagging and wives just call a friendly reminder!) He did get it out and two days and many scratches later the honeysuckle are pruned. (except for the ones we think are holding up the east fence...we aren't touching those until we are ready to replace the whole fence!)

There are two along the back fence, these are pink and yellow and the last two years they have been loaded with aphids.  Hopefully with the trimming and a little judicious spraying of soap and water early on we can keep the little buggers at bay.  I did not know that honeysuckle branches are layered and peel off in something that looks like basket weaving material.  I even found yellowjacket nests in this one!

this is the arbor between the house and the shop

this is the honeysuckle that hasn't been trimmed in years on the shop

this is the view from the other side of the arbor

I was pretty sure these had not been trimmed for several years and a couple of the plants were dead as of last summer.








I wanted to leave enough base for the vines to be trained onto and yet get rid of the spider home, robins nest, moldy leaves part.  Somewhere in that process I realized I probably should have had a mask on...sigh!










These things are all dead twigs and the big parts come off like a tumbleweed.  They are hideous to cut!  I will love them again when they bloom but I was about ready to rip them all out at one point!  The dead parts were hard as a rock and my arms looked like the cat and I had a fight, and I was picking little twigs out of my hair all evening!  The amount of dust that had built up in them was amazing and it was only the electric hedge trimmer that kept me going!  :)

 Hurrah!  We can actually walk through the archway now and the two bushes that I left are clean and ready for a little pampering this summer as they have been ignored and that's how they got this way!  They will get a little fish emulsion and some new weaving for the long pieces so they grow in the correct direction.  The arbor is close to our bedroom window and I have to tell you on a summer morning it is a lovely smell.  These bushes are the yellow and white ones with the black berries on them that I believe are poisonous.  The birds avoid them!

Yes this is much better!!

There seems to be such a lot to do before we even get our seeds started this year.  I think the major things have taken up a lot of our time the last couple of years and so these minor things are getting some attention now!  It is kind of nice to get out and work outside again...of course it may snow in a couple of days...ah well, we do what we can!