Today was a lot about tearing things up.

First, I poured the jumbo container of Roundup into my sprayer, and went to work on the side yard, the strip in the front yard that I’ll be reworking next, the sidwalks and walkways. Everything got a good dose of weed killer—because the one thing I seem to be able to grow with amazing success is weeds.

Next, I fluffed up the old mulch in the front bed, moved it all around, and then added some new. I decided that the nandina I planted in the front corner by the driveway was officially dead, and pulled it out. In its place is one of my two yellow Knock Out rose bushes.

While I was thinking about rose bushes, I hiked around to the side of the backyard, and pruned the one there. This poor rose bush. It’s sad looking, but the canes on it are thick, and it already had a lot of new growth. I whacked it down as much as I dared. I’m hoping it will be more bushy this year, and less spindly.

Since I had the clippers out, I went to work on the fenceline I share with the bad neighbor. I’ve lived here for going on nine years, and I’ve only spoken to these people once. They never smile or say hello, and the one time I went over to talk to them about the scrub growing along the fence and up onto my roof, two of them were rude. Last year, they took everything along our shared fence down to the ground. All the bad stuff grew back in, choking out the good, because the roots were left intact. Now, we have nothing but scrub between us.

My general policy about this shared fence is anything growing over onto my side can be chopped off. Also, anything I can pull to my side, like the evil thorny vines that snake their way over all summer, and grow around my gate latch, sealing it closed, and up into the trees, making a huge mess. Needless to say, I whacked a lot of stuff away.

I also cropped the two nandinas growing under the kitchen window. I have a sort of love hate relationship with these bushes. I love them because they’re lush and full, and their new growth comes in a brilliant red in the spring. They’re really pretty. Sadly, they also want to be six feed tall, but they’re sitting under a window. Every spring, I whack them down to half their height, and all spring, summer and fall, grow, so by winter, they’re peeking up over the window sill, reminding me that when it starts to get warm, I should go out there and whack them again.

So, now I have a bunch of dead weeds, three piles of scrub that need to be bound up for the trash, and one rose bush in the ground. I think it’s supposed to freeze again tomorrow, so I probably won’t be doing any gardening for a couple of days.