Driveway Bushes

Another gorgeous day in GA and another day to get out the pruning stuff and continue to prune what seems to be a never-ending number of 'things' to be whacked a bit.  The kind of easy part was trimming off two little branches from the little magnolia tree.  I put in in the ground a couple of months ago I think it was and it seems to be doing well.  Problem is the land is sloped where the tree is -- all the land is sloped in GA! -- and I can't keep water near it when I water.  So, I went out and got a little bit of edging and made a circle, filled it with peat moss, and voila... a water holder for the little tree. 

The next part of the day was a bit more difficult and that was trimming the bushes running up the lower end of the driveway that have just grown out of whack.  I'm thinking no branch on them has seen a lopper since the time they went in the ground, something like 5 years ago.  It was not easy because it's almost impossible to stand on the driveway at this point, the damn bag holding the small trimmings keeps falling over and the trimmings kept coming out, and on the other side it's worse -- pine needle mulch covering the steep incline and impossible to keep ones footing.  Whatever... I did what I could and got one side done and will get to the other one tomorrow or next weekend.  It's not going anywhere :)

The left side done; the right side still to go.

Of course looking from the other direction, it's the right side looking rather nice and the left looking oh so ugly!

I also got a bit of a surprise to make my day complete.  After getting everything on the one side trimmed, the tools put away, and the drive swept up a bit, I had to get all the trimmings down near the street and piled up.  I scooped them up using both arms and sort of held them to my bare chest, got the load down to the bottom, and went back for the next load.  I figure I had 7-8 loads.  I get all done with that and my arms, chest and stomach were burning or itching, whatever.  I have no idea what did it but my arms, chest and stomach are covered with red welt things.  I don't know if it was from the trimmings themselves or if there were some critters on them that were pissed off that I was whacking their house or something.  Don't know, but I'll be wearing a long-sleeve shirt when I do it again.  I was wearing gloves, so no problem with the hands, thank you very much :)

Yuck!