Wednesday, January 1, 2014

The Garden in January

I haven’t been in the garden for a long time - not since the end of August or first part of September.  I injured my arm and had trouble with it for months and months.  It turned out to be a pinched nerve rather than muscle strain and finally got itself un-pinched.  Thank goodness!  The moral of this story is that there hasn’t been any gardening done all that time.

Then - the weekend before Christmas we had an ice storm in Oklahoma.  It was a doozie!  I've posted pictures of the ice at our house; these are from Mom's place.

 The sage and the thyme survived nicely and looked beautiful in ice.

 The centerpiece of our flowerbeds - the redbud tree - split and toppled.   


A few smaller branches were hanging brokenly - 
mostly resting on bird feeders.


Rob, the handyman extraordinaire, came when the weather warmed up and cut everything down to a two-foot stump.  Younger Brother came to get that last bit for the lathe-turned ballpoint pens that his woodshop class makes. 

When the weather warms up again, Rob will get a stump grinder to remove the roots, then we’ll plant a flowering shrub in the middle to replace the tree.  It surely will be missed.  The Redbud was old, had lost a lot of its branches until it was more sculpture than full tree.  Just the way we liked it.


So, I guess I’ll be starting over with the garden this year.  

That’s ok.  I get to dig in the dirt.

~~~Why a shrub?  'Cause I'm in my sixties and Mom is in her eighties.  We can't wait around for a tree to grow.