Our Yard, In The Middle of Our Street

Spring has brought all kinds of surprises to our yard.

It seems like every day another mysterious plant pops up, and it's been fun seeing what will sprout up next. 

It's like lawn sorcery. This is our first spring in our house, so we have no idea what perennials are buried there.

Actually, we don't know anything about plants in the first place, let alone plants we didn't put there, so whenever a new one comes in we just name it what we think it is, but who are we kidding, we have no idea.

Last weekend the green plants around the Japanese Maple came in like gangbusters. (We only know it's a Japanese Maple because there's a tag on the tree that says so.) So we stood around last Sunday afternoon holding tiny lawn rakes and admiring them, saying things like, 'Oh, the hostas are really coming in strong.'

Then we Google hostas and realize what we think are hostas probably aren't.

Then we're all, 'Oh, the plants formerly known as hostas are looking really good.'

It's like Prince is in our yard. 

Like Prince, only green and probably not Jehovah's Witnesses.

I spent the better part of Sunday afternoon trimming these crazy Spidery Pouf Balls (official name) we have.
 
Our yard is smaller than our living room, which is really small. But you'd be surprised how long it takes to give these things haircuts.

Unruly Spidery Pouf Balls

Unruly, I say.

The neighbors' Spidery Pouf Balls are cut way back, so taking a cue from the Joneses, we decided to cut ours back too.

I trimmed them just enough to make them tidy but left them long enough that they should feel free fro-out this summer, if that's how they chose to express themselves. (Trimming them into mullets didn't look as funny as I thought it might. Disappointing.)

But they look way better with haircuts.

Before




After

 


Keeping up with the Joneses on our street is no easy task. Everyone has perfectly manicured yards, perfect bushes, perfect flowers, perfect landscaping.

Then there is our yard. We have yard envy. Even our yard hates our yard.

As I was getting Edward Scissorhands on it, sending clipped bits of Spidery Pouf Ball flying, I fantasized about trimming my neighborhoods neatly shaped bushes into different animals.





I thought if I snuck around in the middle of the night and turned everyone's perfect rows of bushes into fun animals - a bunny, a kitten, maybe a small bear - people would come out of their houses in the morning delighted to find these sculptured surprises.

It would be the talk of the neighborhood. Everyone would chatter about when the 'Silent Sculptor' (that's what I'd named myself in my fantasy) would strike again, and they'd all secretly hope they'd be next.

This is where our yard would finally shine.

While everyone else has neat little rows of landscaped shrubs in their yards, we have a horrendously gigantic and overgrown bush in front of our house.

As the Silent Sculptor, I'd save it for last and turn into a gigantic dinosaur so that our yard would be the prized yard, finally.




I told Ray my idea and said he should do this for us, since I don't know how to sculpt bushes into animals. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to do it either.

No biggie. Some neighbors may end up with butchered bushes while we get the hang of it, but that's the price they will have to pay for a neighborhood playground of fun shrub animals.

But judging by the superior haircuts I gave the Spidery Pouf Balls, this is definitely doable.

Soon our yard will be the envy of the neighborhood. Soon.