Accidental gardening and other neighborhood news

Today started out cloudy with threatened rain, and I was looking out the kitchen window and realized that the huge clump of yellow daisy like flowers across the street, the house my friend Girija just left for a bigger place, were possible candidates for a bit of transplanting to my yard. And a cloudy rainy day a great time to do it.

Texted her and she said, oh, my pleasure, take a clump, yes, go ahead.  So I went over there and dug a decent sized clump from the back, where it's not visible from the street, made no difference to its appearance.  And inadvertently picked up a little azalea bush twined in its roots, so oh well, it had to come too.

And planted it out front of my own house, sending pix to G showing her the results at both places.  

Here's the clump I planted chez Boud

She has a tenant coming in soon, so I wanted her to know her old place still looked nice.  And while I was at it, neighbor next door came across to see what was up, and pointed out a rose stuck in the midst of the flowers.  Suggested it come out of there.  I thought I would replant it for her in a better location out front of her house, texted accordingly, and she said, oh, just take it, it's yours.  

Not a huge fan of roses, but I'm not a fan of good plants being left to deteriorate either, and I know the incoming tenant is no gardener. In fact G isn't either, but did try her hand at it.  So I went to dig out the rose, and found it was practically out of the ground, totally over to one side like Gourock, little Glaswegian joke there, and required little digging to get it up.  

But I was sort of amazed to find when I did that it was about six feet tall when upright, and was very awkward to handle.  It stuck me all over the place, caught on everything as I got it back across the street, and found my pruners to reduce it to something more manageable.  Never been pruned, I think.  After frost I'll prune further back to give it a good chance next year.  No idea what sort of rose, color, anything, yet.  But it needs some tlc to resume any sort of normal growth pattern.

Planted it next to the climbing rose in the back, and booted out a few iris in the process, but replaced them elsewhere, doesn't harm them to be moved. Then reduced the savagely thorny clippings to bits and tossed them out to the woods for wildlife shelter.

After that, covered in blood and soil and sweat, but not tears, I had to start over again completely with a clean outfit and shower.

Then neighbor wanted to ask about moving stuff about in his yard, and we both did a bit of stealth cleanup in another neighbor's yard, also not a gardener, and with an absentee landlord.  Looks much better now.  Huge rosa rugosa had taken over an azalea, other stuff going wild. And we got done before the tenant came home...felt very sneaky about it.  He probably wouldn't mind, but still.

While we were pottering about gardening, and he offered to move the rose from across the street for me and I said too late, it's done, and he laughed, shoulda known, and by way of a change of subject, showed me a couple of pix on his phone. No, no, what were you thinking, very innocent stuff.

He was away yesterday for serious medical stuff, fingers crossed all around for his results, anyway, got home last night and showed me what he found.  His bedroom looked a bit like a snowdrift, mounds of fluffy white all over the place.  Evidently his two little dogs had improved the shining hour by eviscerating a down pillow. Amazing how far that stuff goes.  When he came home, they ran to meet him at the door and he noticed one was covered head to foot in white fluff... 

Shortly after this yet another neighbor, an excitable lady, came trotting over to see what we were gardening about, and said, you will never guess what I found!  I opened the dumpster to put in garbage and there's this huge mound of white stuff! no idea what it is.  What do you think happened?  Whereupon I said, oh, Gary can tell you that.  And he showed her the pix. Honestly it was like a movie. You can't make this stuff up. 

Afterword on the HS celebration: The birthday dinner went over great, Handsome Son totally enjoyed the dinner, and the prosecco toasts, ate large helpings of the spag with the special sauce, and the Battenberg cake with raspberry sauce. He also left with the rest of the cake, very happily.  Nice evening, Campion video, a first for him, and he wished there were subtitles.

So all's well in the neighborhood today.