It was a brisk 44°F in the bright sunshine of early morning this past Sunday, with coffee in hand and an amazing pooch starting his day with his typical sniffing excursions. I paused at the front of the house to take in how gorgeous a morning it was, with a brilliant blue sky and still a most marvelous house to call my own.
Ah, but it seems also to be a season of death and dying around the yard. On either side of the front steps, both of my dwarf mugo pine bushes are giving up the ghost.
One has lost all its needles, and the other is about half-way there.
Before summer was quite over, I saw my japonica bush had also expired, although I'm suspicious that it lost the fight for water and nutrients with the monkey grass that had crowded around it.
Over on the south property line, in the narrow region beside the driveway that I simply call "The Azaleas," three of those shrubs down towards the front have all perished. I'm pretty sure it's the continuing issue of some pesky invasive root system that I've not yet dug up enough of.
And I don't think I can prevent it from coming back so I'll have to come up with an alternative plan next spring for a best use of that small sloped area so close to the sidewalk and passersby.
Finally, I'm utterly flummoxed about the new yard that I worked so hard to establish, because most of the grass I had planted has died off and disappeared and in its place is a clumping invasive grass. I mean: all of my expensive mail-order-seeded grass that was so lush in the spring is completely gone! I've got sizable bare spots on each side of the front lawn. It's a bit late in the season now, but I have spread fresh grass seed and reset the regular irrigation routine in hopes I can get new grass established before winter invades. It's as much to control for clover and weeds as it is to be sure that I don't end up having washed out topsoil and such.
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