Alas, I did not take any photographs of the “before”. I’m sure I could hunt through the archives and find one (too lazy), or you could just take my word for it – there was ten years of ivy growth in this spot that is now dirt and straggling roots. You can see the rusty sections of fence that were underneath all this ivy. It was time to do some general maintenance on the fence – clean it off, re-prime and paint it for another decade. Before we planted the ivy we had hostas, and daylillies and even some tulips under the dogwood tree, but every year those plants got a bit more choked out by the ivy. We pulled the ivy out in the blazing heat of this past Memorial Day weekend – not a task for the faint of heart – and within 48 hours the other plants bloomed for the first time in several years.
Like I mentioned last week, we’re sprucing up the front yard this summer and making it a more pleasurable place to hang out and enjoy the music that is played across the street on Thursdays and Saturdays. And each weekend we’ll do it a bit more to get it that way. I’ll try to post a sketch of the landscape plan for the yard soon.