"Ma in her kerchief and I in my cap had just settled down for a long winter's nap..."

Yesterday was an awakening...no, not a spiritual awakening; not a physical awakening. It was the awakening of the season of yard care! The sun shone brightly, and the yard looked so pathetic after we had a bout of weather (before Christmas) with temperatures in the teens followed by a fair amount of rain.

So, yesterday, with the temperature mild and the weather dry and sunny, Jill and I began to putter a little. The dracaena had a ton of brown leaves, and since it sits just outside the living room window, it began to depress us to look at it. So, I went out to trim the dead leaves. Meanwhile, Jill went out the other door to weed the front flower bed.

Once the dracaena was trimmed, I took on the aralia, which hangs over our fish pond. It is a pretty hardy plant, but the freeze had killed a lot of the leaves and some of the branches. By the time I had trimmed all of that dead material off, the plant was about 1/2 its original size. But there is a lot of new growth sprouting on the remaining branches, and I know it will rebound.

About the time I had finished trimming the aralia, Jill came around the corner with the yard debris bin and began picking up the trimmings. That freed me up to attack the vine maple, which is apparently way too happy in its location, because it grows very dense foliage and is like an opaque wall in the summer. I trimmed out some of the biggest branches and quite a few smaller ones. I believe it will give us filtered sunlight, with just enough privacy this coming summer.

Next I trimmed a few branches off the volunteer birch tree on the south edge of the yard and some small branches from the pine in the corner. I followed that with judicious trimming of the spruce on the north side of the yard. Well, of course, when I was done with all my limb lopping, and in spite of the fact that Jill had been madly cleaning up behind me, we had quite a pile of debris. Two of our three pair of garden shears had disappeared somewhere, and the third pair was frustratingly difficult for Jill to use in cutting up the branches I had trimmed.

We hopped in the car and made a run to Lowe's, where we found new garden shears and some paper yard debris bags. (We knew that all of this stuff was not going to fit in the yard debris bin.) Back in the yard again, we clipped up the branches into stuffable sizes and filled three of the bags. Then we raked up the last of the fall leaves (already, in February, no less) and stuffed them in a fourth bag.

The yard looks so much better. I will mow the lawn and edge it, after the morning fog lifts today. The front bed that Jill weeded is transformed, but we have decided to do a complete renovation later in the spring. We found a beautiful water feature at Lowe's that we think might make a great center piece...but that is another story for another post.