Bikini Wax – Garden Style

by Rheasq

I am still trying to locate those joneses in my garden, in the meantime maintenance of the overgrown is a priority.  No new plants, just deal with what is here.

For those of you titillated by the title, freshly off 50 Shades of Gray.  Sorry no can do.  Although……..

Wild Irish Rose:  You are not beautiful, or thin or virginal, but I am embedding 16 thorns into your scalp and arms and back.  Once you have experienced the exquisite pain of my entry into your skin, the only thing more exquisite will be the rapturous extrication and removal to the compost bin……

Almost but no cigar.

So this week, editing.  What should be seen by the public.  Editing.  The limbing up of shrubbery that have had the audacity to be successful despite multiple years of neglect and drought.  Bikini Wax for a Gardener’s Soul.  Should I write a book?

I had the pleasure of a successful partnership in the last few weeks with Beavercreek Landscaping.  I had envisioned a fence that would mirror an arbor that my beloved had built, years ago.  Working with Mark was indeed a pleasure and he took my artsy directions and gave it life.  Which meant I had to get to work.  Rose of Sharon, lilac, elderberry all needed editing.  As did my volunteer wild roses, progeny of a ditch rescue. A planting bed built willy nilly suddenly became a blank canvas with a gorgeous fence backdrop.  Scalpel, suture.

These beautifully hardy, successful shrubs needed  a little context to highlight their existence. Enter the okatosunes the loppers, the handsaw.  Suddenly, the beautiful fence made these horticultural ass-kickers seem like hillbillies on a beach in Brazil.  Hulking, over grown, hiding God knows what underneath all the overgrowth.  Time to edit with extreme prejudice.  Limbing up everything. Taking away everything not adding to horticultural beauty.  Cross branches, suckers, low fillers.  All gone.  Now suddenly airy with real estate to fill underneath.

Now many more decisions to be made.  How best to take advantage of this revealed horticultural landscape?  50 shades of green.  Right here in River City.  With a capital G and that rhymes with P and that stands for ………..?