Sunday, June 10, 2007

The Bane of My Backyard


My greatest landscaping dilemma is whether or not to remove this bush. When the original owners of my house moved in nine years ago, they did very little landscaping. While most homes my block are now enjoying the benefits of somewhat mature landscaping we are basically starting from scratch. The bush pictured above is one the few mature plants that we have. Sadly I'm this close ripping the mother f'er out of the ground.

It really is a nice looking bush, it grows well, not a small feat in this climate. Its flowers attract scads of hummingbirds to my living window, much to the delight of the cats. Unfortunately for a bush with so many wonderful qualities it could not have been planted in worse location.

It was planted just inches away from the edge of the pool. This is a problem because it fills the pool with an ungodly amount dead leaves and flowers. I clean the pool, turn my back, and once again the pool is full of debris from this accursed bush. Oh why couldn't the original owners have just planted it few more feet to the right?

I have looked in to if a could transplant it, but have been told that it would probably kill it. Which at this point would not break my heart. I am seriously thinking of replacing it with a giant agave this fall.

2 comments:

Whitney said...

If you don't really care if the shrub dies then try to replant it. It only involves digging an extra hole. If not then cut it down and start over. We had to do that with some of our landscaping. We are about to take down a bunch of old shrubs that are over grown and had been pruned wrong years ago. Now they just look funny.

Anonymous said...

Show no pity. Dig it up. Kill, kill, kill!