Spring cleanup. Or, my outside plants!

It is a nice calm day, here. Sunny but already getting too warm for this time of year. I will post the Pampas Grass here, Anna.

@miniam It's chilly today, there were only 5 degrees this morning.

Windy and chilly here@LadyDuck

@DaddyEvil I have that all over the place.

No, it doesn't take long at all, Judy! LOL! But we wanted some of these plants to take over when we planted them... They make good privacy blocks from prying neighbors as well as beautiful scenery when we look out from our front deck. Here is a picture of Vinca Minor that we planted to cover some ground that didn't seem to want to grow anything. I love the dark, glossy leaves as well as the bright blue flowers in Spring.

@DaddyEvil That is very pretty. We need more groundcovers and less bushes as the bushes grow too big and stop our view of the kangaroos that feed just down from the house.

@DaddyEvil ....I love pink!

@celticeagle (grinning at you!) That figures! The person I choose to complain to about something likes what I am complaining about! (teasing!)

Thanks! Isn't it great how fast they can fill in and block our view of things we don't want to see?! Now, if I could just block the view of the Fall Crocuses in bloom in my front yard, I'd be happy all the time! (I really don't mind flowers, but these are PINK! I'm not impressed with them, at all!)

Actually, @rebelann , the bamboo would love the heat, but not necessarily the aridity where you live. If you ever tried growing it there, I would suggest you run a water hose over to the bamboo with a drip lead so the plants can soak up all the water they want. I don't believe they could grow without that water. The bamboo would rather have the direct sunlight, instead of shade. This is a picture of my Pampas Grass early this Spring.

Hummm, that might work considering I have clay like soil where even the heat can't evaporate all the water @DaddyEvil I've had several mondale pines die because of root rot.

@rebelann My part of Missouri is heavy on the red clay, too. Usually, to get a good flowerbed going I have to dig out a trench bigger than the flowerbed I want and about twice as deep as the roots will need to go so there is adequate drainage and evaporation of water is possible to keep from drowning plants. Then I fill the trench with manure compost, sphagnum moss and potting soil. With some plants I must add a small amount of sand and mix everything together before planting anything. The bamboo took no special treatment like that. It apparently loves the clay here! Here is a picture I took today showing several new stalks of bamboo growing where I removed the damaged bamboo.

LOL! Actually, @Jessicalynnt , I wouldn't have pruned nearly as heavy as I did if the roofer hadn't made such a big mess of my bamboo! We wanted that thick growth because it blocked the neighbors from sitting in their living room and staring at us while we were trying to sit out on our front deck. (I don't know what people around here find so fascinating about my daughter and I, but we have had several sets of neighbors who spent their spare time watching our every move! It really gets annoying FAST!) This picture shows what the area that was so heavily overgrown looked like when I finished removing the ruined bamboo and cutting back the Birdberry bush so it could start new growth this year, too.

@DaddyEvil Will the bamboo make a complete recovery?

@TheHorse Yes, pony, it will. It might take it a couple of years to do it, but it will fill back in the areas I had to take it out of. It has already made a good start on that. I took another picture today of that same area. I took one of this area the day before yesterday for @Jessicalynnt to show her the largest stalk we have ever grown, but there is even more growing now than there was then. If you increase the size of the picture, you can clearly see new bamboo sprouts starting to pop up through the ground by the house/deck.

LOL! Believe it or not, @RussTeed , one of my friends was fooling around, trying to tease me and accidentally set fire to one of the two clumps of Pampas Grass! He had no clue that Pampas Grass will flare up and burn HOT! Luckily, my garden hose was right there and still turned on. We contained the fire and nothing was damaged. Here is a picture of the Sugarcane before I cut it down this spring.

@RussTeed Yeah, I should have ask him if he knew you! LOL! How versed are you in plant identification, Russ? Someone gave two seeds to Pretty several years ago and told her it would grow into a beautiful vine. They said we would love it... Well, it did grow into a beautiful vine! But now we can't get rid of it! Its leaves are heart shaped and it has little tiny blooms that remind me of some of the wild flowers. It is more like a catkin than a flower. In the fall it has what looks like baby potatoes on it at the junction of each leaf stem and the main vine. The "potatoes" are only about the size of a dime up to the size of a nickel. Otherwise they look exactly like little potatoes. I'm hoping someone can tell me what it is and how to kill it out! (Pretty and I suspect it is Kudzu, but we aren't sure.)

@DaddyEvil That friend must be a relative of mine, LOL. Cool pic!

@DaddyEvil, I love the Western Slope and not sure where Fair Play lives. If his avatar is of a person on a bicycle he is several hours away, so closer than most members. I don't have any recent photos, but our place had been vacant for 2 years and no one had taken care of anything. That took us months and months to get it in to shape. Even after it was cleaned up it was very plain and patchy. It is starting to really look nice now, not as patchy. Going to actually plant some plants as soon as the weather decides that it's going to stay warm. Besides rose bushes and a few small trees and a few very scrawny bushes not much in the line of plants, its the grass and the weed things in the pasture/field that get out of control, especially with all the rain we are getting. I will see if I can take a picture this evening and post it here. Beautiful blooms.

Thank you! Wow! You had/have a lot of clearing and cleanup to do, too! You could have posted a picture of some of your work. I would love to see what you have growing and blooming in your yard. Aside: You live fairly close to Fair Play, don't you? We used to own a place there that we took vacations at until my daughter wasn't able to go anymore. So we sold it. I really miss going out there every year! Our yard is coming back fast this year! We did most of this cleanup just a few (2 to 3) weeks ago. Everything is looking nice again, already! Here is a picture I took a few minutes ago showing one of the bushes in full bloom.

@DaddyEvil This flowering bush is a Weigela.

@DaddyEvil I can't imagine that type of allergy to a plant, well grass. YIKES. Your poor friend. Is this the decorative grass that you can get in different colors? Does it stop growing at a certain height? You really do have strange plants at your house. LOL

Growing the Pampas Grass against my front sidewalk is the reason I can grow it so well here, mommaj. It can get too cold here in the winter for Pampas Grass. The sun warms the concrete sidewalk and in turn, the sidewalk keeps the roots of the plant warm enough to survive our harsh winters. I do use hedge trimmers on the Pampas Grass about once a month to keep the sidewalk clear so we can get to and from the house without having the grass brush against us. I have to trim it for another reason, too. One of my friends is allergic to the little hairs that grow on the Pampas Grass. If a leaf brushes against my friend, he can go into anaphylactic shock! We had to take him to the emergency room once. I never want to do that again! Here is a picture I took on my way into the house when I got home from work today. This shows how quickly Pampas Grass can grow after being trimmed back. It has only been a few days since I clipped it down.

@mommaj I really felt bad when he had an allergic reaction to one of my plants! (I'm glad insurance paid for his emergency room visit, too! WOW! Did you know it is $4,000 just walking in the emergency room here? We didn't!) Yes, this is one of the decorative grasses that can have plumes in different colors. Pink and cream are the two dominant colors I have seen. Mine are the cream variety. The grass itself grows to about six feet high and the plumes can grow as high as ten or twelve feet... LOL! I told you so! (And you were going to hide among them, too!) Here is how the Sugarcane looked right after I trimmed it back. Not much to see there!

Yeah, Crazy, part of the time I was gone from myLot was spent working on my yard... There was quite a bit more trimming and pruning to be done this year caused by the roofer who said he needed to take down a few of the bamboo stalks that were too close to the house for him to do his work properly. I told him it was okay to remove the ones right against the house IF they were causing a problem and he took them down as close against the ground as he could get them.... I posted the picture of what he did to my bamboo already. Does seven feet up in the air look like it is as close to the ground as possible? (Not to me it doesn't!) So he added an extra two days to the yard work we were already planning to do. Here is what the Pampas Grass looked like after I chopped it down this Spring...

@crazyhorseladycx We went through a drought here a couple of years ago, too. I kept the things watered that were close enough to the house that I could reach with a 100 foot hose. I was sure I would lose a few of my plants, then. I was really surprised when the Sugarcane acted like nothing was wrong those two years, as well as the little Shooting Star vines I mound every year. I can't believe how hardy those two are! Here is a picture of the Shooting Star coming up this Spring.

@DaddyEvil ya jest can't trust some folks :( i miss the 2 massive pampas grasses i'd out by the drive, they fought a hard battle to survive the drought. 'fter 3 years though they perished. durin' such conditions, one jest saves the trees 'n the rest jest does without. i'm still'n shock that some'f my roses made't through - hardy lil suckers.

I was looking for comments that I missed when I found this one hiding down at the very bottom of my discussion, Marsha! LOL! (How do you post things without me being notified?) Would you like to see what my bamboo does when it is covered in snow and ice? LOL! I goes to bed!

@MarshaMusselman Well, no, that shouldn't be what happened, Marsha. When I get those notifications where it masses several people together, I also get the individual ones stating so and so commented. It just groups them if you haven't done anything with your notifications for a while. You still get both kinds. Here are some of the Spring Crocus that bloomed in my yard earlier.

@DaddyEvil I don't understand how we miss certain notifications either and then the rest of the time we have the ones that say someone likes, mentions and commented on something or another when it's usually all the same comment or response,. I think we miss some when we don't see them when they first show up and then later other names are first and we're part of the X amount of others that also responded, and all those names arent' given each time.

LOL! You KNOW I add comments to your posts all the time, pony! Is there anything in particular you would like to see more of or have more explanation or description about from my yard or houseplants? How about I show you what my yard looked like after a nice snow storm?

@DaddyEvil Very pretty! I miss snow. But I'm glad (and my plants are glad) that we're done with cold temperatures for this year.

@DaddyEvil I absolutely love your lilac bush.

@beaniefanatic13 Thank you! We love it, too. We just wish it would stay in bloom longer than a week or at most, two weeks. We like picking bouquets of Lilac flowers and keeping them in a vase in the house. The whole house smells like that for days! We do the same with that unknown bush when it flowers (just picked some of it to replace the spent Lilacs today.) and the Lily of the Valley that grows along one wall of our house, too. I thought we wouldn't see any flowers from the Lily of the Valley for a few more weeks, but I just took a picture showing them starting to bloom a few minutes ago! They smell heavenly! Here is that picture.

Yeah, @DeborahDiane , I have a feeling you've done your fair share of yard work over the years... LOL! None of the yard work is really onerous, but cleaning the yard up after taking down bushes or trimming back shrubs does scratch a person up... Neither Pretty nor I like to wear gloves while working in our yard. It is usually too hot! We both looked like an overgrown cat had gotten us by the time we were done! LOL! Would you like to see our lilac bush in bloom, DD? I took a picture of it last week.

@just4him Wait! You thought the Evil name I use was just for appearance sake? LOL! I am certainly glad you have finally figured that out! Let me see... what have I got left to show off? How about the newest addition to my plants, Valerie? It is so new I haven't gotten it into the ground yet. It is still in a plastic bag in a bowl on our kitchen table. I should be able to plant it outside tomorrow if the rain holds off for a few hours tomorrow morning. This is the fern, Burgundy Lace.

LOL! Yeah, there was a lot of it to do, Valerie! We have it done now, though! Now I just have to take enough pictures that I can keep up with all these comments! LOL! (I am willing to be I have enough pictures!) Here is a picture of our grape hyacinths that were blooming right before I mowed this last time. (Hey, at least I took a picture before chopping them down, right? LOL!)

@DaddyEvil They are very pretty. I'm glad they grow back, but I suppose that means you'll mow them down again. You truly are evil

To us, it was absolutely beautiful before we had to cut everything down! Well, usually when we cut down whatever is left of the sugarcane we simply pile it into an additional "wall" between our yard and the nosy neighbor lady's yard. (I drove bamboo poles into the ground. The poles are about six feet tall the wall is roughly four inches thick when we're done cutting.)

@DaddyEvil You didn't cut it all completely down did you, all you had to do was trim it up a bit and shape them! Wow, that would make a great fence, don't you eat any of it?

@DaddyEvil Oh I see, what about the rest of the bushes? You don't cut them to the ground, you just shape them right! How come you don't give the syrup away, or she could sell it if its really good. Shame it has to go to waste like that

I am not sure what the actual classification for that bush is. Mom called it Birdberry because it has bright red berries the birds LOVE to eat. It blooms in the early spring. The flowers are white and about two inches across. It only blooms on new growth. Doing a search for Birdberry bush gave many bushes that appear similar to what grows in my yard. The best match I could locate is called Viburnum trilobum or the American cranberry bush. LOL! You could do like we have done for the past three years... Our Sugarcane patch is over 15 feet across. Once the canes are taller than we are we hollowed out the center of the patch and set two glider rocking chairs in there. The neighbors can't see us and it is nice and shady and cool in there. We had a similar hollow behind the bamboo in the front yard, but the roofer destroyed that one. We can enjoy the day without worrying about why someone is watching us. Here is a picture of some succulents we used to "carpet" both hollows. The picture is taken by our front steps going into the house.

Hello, Rose! I am glad you could make it over to see what I am doing/have done with my yard! IDK if you were here when I posted the pictures of how it looked before I some of the stuff got ruined or not... Here is how it looked last summer right after I mowed.

Thank you, @maezee ! Yeah, especially after it starts getting hotter later in the summer! When it gets too hot I end up having to mow the yard as it is getting dark to take advantage of the cooler evening air here. Here is a picture showing part of my yard after it has just been mowed.

@DaddyEvil Wow! That is beautiful. I wish my landlord would let me plant things in the ground here. Well, hopefully I won't be here next year and I can do what I want to. Thank you so much for sharing. I love having beauty around me.

@velvet53 Thank you! If/When you make it down to the Ozarks again, you can be sure I will load you up with cuttings and starts from any of my plants you'd like. (Inside or out.) As long as I keep my yard looking trimmed up and nice, my landlord doesn't care what I plant here.

Thank you, Velvet! I love my yard plantings! Which bushes are you asking about? The Birdberry bush and the Bamboo both regrew really fast! Hmmm... I should have pics of them on my pc from this year. Let me look... brb! I had to find and load a picture I took of the bamboo last year after it started making a come-back, Velvet. (I hope you like my photo.)

Thank you, @minisam ! It is always a pain to do this every year, but I love how my yard looks as well as the attention the unusual plants get here. So it is worth it to us! Let me see... I think I will post the pics showing how everything looked last summer first, So I will post the Sugarcane here. Hope you like the pic.

LOL! Yeah, I guess you could say that, @pinkcardigangirl . That sounds a lot nicer than calling it fixing the fudge-ups! (Not quite what I was calling it, but that is close enough for myLot! LOL!) I was looking around my yard today and noticed the spathes on the Lord and Lady plant are fully open now. (Spathe is the single petal on the flower. This picture shows the spathe still green because these are still young plants.

@DaddyEvil I'm glad you explained what a spathe was because when I read it I wondered. :) It looks really nice. I'm not sure I've ever seen this plant before.

Are you living in this home or did you buy it as a home to fix up?