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madrobinsI am not, like some of my friends (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jonquil and tnh, I'm looking at you) a gardener. I'm not anti-green things, I'm just not particularly good at keeping them green, and it's not a thing I love to do. I'm more a walk-around-looking-at-oddities-of-type. However, when we bought our house it came along with a back yard with three trees (one fir, one lemon, and one damned-if-I-know thing with long, willow-like leaves that do not weep) and various plants--bulbs that burst forth in the spring, some Birds of Paradise, and a bush that I in my ignorance would call forsythia, but probably isn't. Climbing over our back fence is something that looks like a blackberry bush with a profusion of fruit in various stages of ripeness. Since the neighboring back yard whence this springs is far more chaotic than ours, I doubt they're missing the fruit, but until I know for sure that those berries are edible, I'm doing nothing more than trimming them back so that no one dies on the considerable thornage.
We are not gardeners, but there's a period in the spring when everything looks ordered and pretty and green. Then comes summer, which in San Francisco is damp but not rainy, and foggy as often as it is sunny. And the lemon tree, in particular, goes into overdrive. Left to its own devices it would, I think, attempt total world domination. So once every summer I wind up pruning the lemon tree. This is a more involved process than you would think--balked of its impulse to spread sideways into neighboring gardens, the tree puts up shoots that go straight up. Most of them can only be reached, and cut down, from the roof of the little shed that holds the laundry. So I clamber up in the broiling sun and start snipping and snapping with my adjustable pruning shears. It's sort of like giving someone a haircut: every time you snip in one area another that you hadn't thought needed it reveals itself as wildly overgrown. And with every snip I get closer to the edge of the shed (maybe 10-12' up) and my fear-of-precipi makes my stomach turn upside down. And every time I cut another branch and it falls where I can reach it and toss it down, I toss it off the shed, which reminds me that I could fall off the shed too, and my stomach flops again. You don't really want to know what fun I had clambering down off the roof when I'd done what I could from that angle.
I'm about to go out and prune the front part of the tree to match the back, and then we will stuff the resulting lemon boughs into the composting container and Sunset Scavenger will see that we are good citizens who compost as we ought. It is up to the spouse to deal with the non-pruning tasks in the garden (I won't weed. Don't ask me.).
I've harvested a few lemons, too. When I've caught my breath maybe I'll consider what to do with them.
jonquil and tnh, I'm looking at you) a gardener. I'm not anti-green things, I'm just not particularly good at keeping them green, and it's not a thing I love to do. I'm more a walk-around-looking-at-oddities-of-type. However, when we bought our house it came along with a back yard with three trees (one fir, one lemon, and one damned-if-I-know thing with long, willow-like leaves that do not weep) and various plants--bulbs that burst forth in the spring, some Birds of Paradise, and a bush that I in my ignorance would call forsythia, but probably isn't. Climbing over our back fence is something that looks like a blackberry bush with a profusion of fruit in various stages of ripeness. Since the neighboring back yard whence this springs is far more chaotic than ours, I doubt they're missing the fruit, but until I know for sure that those berries are edible, I'm doing nothing more than trimming them back so that no one dies on the considerable thornage.We are not gardeners, but there's a period in the spring when everything looks ordered and pretty and green. Then comes summer, which in San Francisco is damp but not rainy, and foggy as often as it is sunny. And the lemon tree, in particular, goes into overdrive. Left to its own devices it would, I think, attempt total world domination. So once every summer I wind up pruning the lemon tree. This is a more involved process than you would think--balked of its impulse to spread sideways into neighboring gardens, the tree puts up shoots that go straight up. Most of them can only be reached, and cut down, from the roof of the little shed that holds the laundry. So I clamber up in the broiling sun and start snipping and snapping with my adjustable pruning shears. It's sort of like giving someone a haircut: every time you snip in one area another that you hadn't thought needed it reveals itself as wildly overgrown. And with every snip I get closer to the edge of the shed (maybe 10-12' up) and my fear-of-precipi makes my stomach turn upside down. And every time I cut another branch and it falls where I can reach it and toss it down, I toss it off the shed, which reminds me that I could fall off the shed too, and my stomach flops again. You don't really want to know what fun I had clambering down off the roof when I'd done what I could from that angle.
I'm about to go out and prune the front part of the tree to match the back, and then we will stuff the resulting lemon boughs into the composting container and Sunset Scavenger will see that we are good citizens who compost as we ought. It is up to the spouse to deal with the non-pruning tasks in the garden (I won't weed. Don't ask me.).
I've harvested a few lemons, too. When I've caught my breath maybe I'll consider what to do with them.