Doing Useful Stuff, 4

My back yard has a lot of mature trees, and a lot of volunteer saplings grow as a result.  Vines keep growing all the time, and I am constantly fighting wild ("mock") strawberries.   I deliberately left half of it "semi-wild".  Well, I'm not the typical suburban yard-like-a-pool-table-top with bits of shrubs and flowers type.

So there is always SOMETHING invading the more domesticated parts of the back yard.  Today, I finally got tired of the wild blackberries infesting the astilbe section of the flowerbed.  No, they aren't blackberries worth eating.  They are small, seedy, and hard as dry raisins. 

So...  I got out my poacher's shovel (a curved shovel with a blade only a few inches wide but 12" long - so named for digging up valuable wild plants with the least soilball for transport).  Its a really nice tool for digging up deep-rooted weeds among close-planted desirable plants. 

An hour later, I had a nice pile of brambles.  I had to work at getting as much of the roots as possible without killing the astilbe and baptisia.  The astilbe are well-grown, but the baptisia are just sending up shoots (they are rather like hostas shoots at emergence).  I still snapped a few baptisia shoots in the process, but was relieved to discover that each of the 6 plants had at least 6 more shoots emerging.

And there is not a briar/bramble to be found in THAT section...

I rewarded myself by standing on the deck with a beer, and classical music on the radio while I contemplated what best to do tomorrow.  And I admired the pile of brambles.  I sure wish I could have had the cats outside with me.  I miss that.  

Tinkerbelle (1982? to 1999), Skeeter (1992 to 2008), and LC (1993 to 2010) were always outside with me.  Tink and LC went over the fence routinely and sometimes stayed out for the night, but they always ran home in the morning.  Skeeter seldom left the yard (crawled through a rabbit trench under the fence a couple of times and then hated it cuz he couldn't find his way back and would moan on the other side until I removed a fence board to give him a return point).

When Ayla stayed out several nights because of "in heat" and then Marley jumped the fence, I had to stop their outside fun.  And there are owls around now at night and they didn't used to be around here.

I think I need to make the under-the-deck patio area a "catio".