Or maybe ” The Azelea Picked the WRONG Day to Get Scale” or maybe even ” Cheryl has a Really Bad Temper” take your pick as a title

So…a few years back a friend of mine and I went to this garden club event where horticulture (and realted) speakers come to give a 5 minute synopsis of their presentations and lectures to those people who plan their garden clubs annual programs (that would have been us for ours that year) . You essentially bring a notepad and keep track of who might be interesting, who is entertaining (my only criteria really) and who to just plain avoid altogether. About halfway through this very stern looking woman all dressed in black who reminded me of the super hero costume designer in the cartoon movie The Incredibles (yes my world is wide..) came up and used her 5 minutes to tell of her program entitled “Gardening Without Plants”.  Who’s bookin this chick?  Seriously, this is your angle?  I thought we giggled too loud at the “bird call” lady but that was tame compared to our reaction to this travesty.

Fast forward to last week. Because I have a free day to work outside it is raining and 45 degrees. Because I have friggin rabbits I am spending my day outside trying to cage off certain plants and the cutting bed with hardware cloth (read :sharp wire you can’t use for clothing ) . Because said “cloth” comes in large rolls you must unroll, and as any of you know who have wallpapered or helped your kid with poster board, rolled things want to stay rolled  I must go find something heavy to put on it so I can cut it. Because it is thick wire the skimpy wire cutters I brought won’t cut it so I must head back in to search for others. Because we live in New England every place I want to mallet in a post has a boulder in the hole so I  must go get the shovel. On every one of these 500 trips back to the garage I am walking by an azelea bed that earlier in the week I had treated with Horticultural oil because it had scale (which it is prone to get every gd year). Each time I look a little closer and I realize that all 10 bushes now despite my efforts have scale on steroids.

Because I can be unbalanced at times, and have been known to throw the odd fit here and there, I immediately turn back into the garage and get the loppers and another shovel..

Here are the azeleas now

 and here is my new garden space (see below) . Because I can give credit where credit is due, thank you lady in black , gardening without plants is a joy.(today anyway, even though I did include just one climbing hydrangea you hardly notice)

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Happy Memmorial Day