I spent a full day yesterday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. pruning boxwoods. That’s insane. I’m assuming it’s faster if you are a more experienced gardener, but I was trying to do a very thorough job of removing dead wood from the interior of the hedges. (My arms bear many scratches today.) The boxwoods were butchered a bit last spring in an attempt to reduce their size, but they’ve filled in enough to move on to phase two, which is hopefully making them more dense.
Last year:
This year:
They’re not great, but they’re improving. I’m going to fertilize them and add mulch, and then be patient.
There was another big change from last year to this year — one that was beyond our control.
I miss that tree so much. It was on the parkway and the village removed it because of emerald ash borer infestation (though the tree still looked perfectly healthy). It came down in only 20 minutes, and instantly our house was bare. They did plant a new tree yesterday though!
Can you even see it? It’s a wee baby elm tree, so they traded one doomed variety for another, but it’s a new hybrid (“new horizon”) that is supposed to be resistant to Dutch elm disease. Here’s a head-on shot.
Grow little tree, grow! (You too, boxwoods. Fill in.)
