Several weeks ago over coffee, an experienced gardener reminded me that the growth and expansion of one plant may influence the growth of others. This has really changed how I think about some of the more “successful” plants in the yard, and now I am trying to anticipate if these faster growing plants will threaten the smaller, slower growing ones. That was my inspiration for removing some of the dogwood and azalea branches earlier in the week. Today, I crawled under the rhododendrons and cut down two mid-sized trees that were starting to shade the vegetable garden.

Removing branches and cutting down trees is the easy part of urban logging. Chopping the branches down small enough to fit into the yard waste bin is the most time consuming part of the whole process. Even relatively short trees generate a lot of material. After two rainy hours I was only half-way finished with the pile, so decided to leave the rest until another day.

As I was walking around the house, I saw a bunch of weeds and my OCD kicked in and so I ended up weeding for another half hour or so.

All this rain has been GREAT for the trees and GREAT for the weeds, but not so great for the vegetables and berries. Hopefully this week it will be sunny again.