BEAST OF A BUSH REPRIEVE....AND ROSES



Beast of a Bush In Full Bloom
  

In a previous post Beast of a Bush, I featured an unidentified bush which started as a seedling and over a few years has mushroomed in to a structure enveloping monster. This past week the strange buds have opened into beautiful star-like flowers. I still do not know its origins, but it is a native bush/tree. I am spotting them everywhere--undeveloped lots, fence rows, in forests, etc. It has a lovely faint, sweet odor, not at all overwhelming, which turns me and my allergies into tyrants in the nasal passages.

Adding to our angst this week, was a balky freezer which was defrosting water. We never decided if it was a faulty seal, faulty frost free mechanism or I had it packed so full there was not a good seal. Since I was disgusted with fooling with it, and Husband was tired of hearing me gripe, we decided to buy another.

It was a learning experience. First of all the first was a lower end 17" which I thought was all two people needed. Howevever smaller ones seem to be "low end" in features such as adjustable shelves (NONE), baskets (NONE) and adjustable door shelving (NONE). Everything was fixed at predetermined intervals.

Further there was no external drip pan! This is where the education began. I knew it did not have a drip pan when I bought it and thought to myself this is strange as a SIDE BY SIDE I bought in the same time frame I think does have. Well, according to two big box stores, any frost free (auto defrost) refrigerator, freezer or combo, does not have external drain pans now.
REASON: Because there is little moisture with frost-free units, so the moisture drains into a shallow well inside the unit which is on top of the compressor underneath. The heat that is under the well evaporates the small amount of moisture into the air inside the unit, at least in theory. Lots of theories when I was in the university doing research, did not "pan out."

Well the aggravating one didNOT evaporate and we were chipping ice out very frequently. Besides what did melt was finding a way outside and damaged the floor.

Three Mini-Rose Bushes
[I pruned these bushss to below the handicap ramp which is the
higher of the two ramps and platform that form the entire ramp.]

So we now have a newer, larger unit with some baskets, adjustable shelves, andelectronic controls on the OUTSIDE of the unit. NO MORE DIGGING around with frozen fingers hunting the temperature control dial.

Fortunately, we watch and minimally keep up a home next to us; we have privileges to use the appliances and even use it as a guest house, all of which we have done on rare occasions. The owners are in New Jersey and visit 2 weeks in Spring and Fall.

This week we have to haul everything back to the neighbor's freezer to the new freezer. JOY! JOY! Just what I love to do--freeze my fingers all over again. I may get out some old mittens.

In February I severely pruned all the roses I have had for years and mainly ignored. It is amazing how they have burgeoned almost as much as the Beast of a Bush. My handicap ramp us being invaded by Mini-Roses, Beast of a Bush and a Forsythia bush. Pretty soon I will need a pogo stick to hop over my invasive plants. I cannot emphasize how severely these plants have been pruned at the right times.



Mini-Rose in a full sun bed near an outbuilding

The Mini-Rose [right] is overtaking the climbing Red Blazer Clinbing rose. I have also transplanted a Knockout rose into this bed which is located by an outbuilding and gets full sun.

Then  my Red Blazer Climbing Rose seem to have developed some different colors, or maybe cross pollinated with something else, or even have some kind of disease. I don;t remember the purplish colors in these closeups. However, it is also mushrooming after a very severe pruning of stems from 6-8 ft. to about 1.5-2 ft.



Climbing Red Blaze Rose

I still have not gotten a night photo of all our solar lights. I need a night I feel like lugging equipment like tripods. May have to use my rollator so I can sit abit while I make time exposures. I am expeiencing a lot of SOB (shortness of breath), despite having reasonably stable control of my atrial fibrillation.

PHOTOS: NitWit1, unless otherwise attributed.

Climbing Red Blaze Rose


Below, Petals in the Straw, is one of those photos that could be portrait or landscape in orientation.
Of course I choose my favorite, PORTRAIT.










Peetals in the Straw

NEVER SAY 'NEVER"....

Today's post is a shortie as I have been extremely busy with some obligations I  put off far too long. The list has shortened this and the past week, but a few items remain on the list.


My title is a thought that came to me from reading a post by Arkansas Patti, entitled Arrogance of Youth and one or two of her comments. Actually, her title would be sufficient as the illustration(s) I have used were made when I was younger than I am now, so there are many, many more than I will have time to use, in the time I have to write.

'I will never be like my mother!' Well broadly, I never was, as I never was a Mother in the true sense of the word. However, she, as well as my father, were very strict disciplinarians from a very conservative religious background with strong ideas of right vs. wrong, and many other seemingly, to me in my youth, unimportant edicts.

This is not to say, I did not love, and generally respect them. I obeyed as best a strong-willed child could as long as I lived under their roof, which was another rule, too.  And I always have attributed all that is good in myself, my behavior, and my life, to their upbringing.

I walk about two blocks to school. My instructions were NEVER, EVER to walk on anyone's property, except if there was a sidewalk--no shortcuts through a front or back yard-that was trespassing, blah! blah! blah!. 

Many many years after her death, and we lived where we are now, we had some rambunctious neighbors' children, kept using our gravel driveway for their joy biking.

I complained to my husband who simply asked, "What are they hurting?" He, a country boy, criss-crossed many a pasture and acreage in his youth, along with brother and sister.

I began a strangely familiar litany. They are trespassing and may fall and hurt themselves, BLAH BLAH BLAH.... and my Mother said..... YIKES! I stopped in mid-stream. I SOUNDED JUST LIKE MY MOTHER!

May be continued.... This new blogger format and my keyboard do not seem very agreeable. It just stops typing and the cursor disappears!

BEAST OF A BUSH - IDENTITY UNKNOWN



Bush at corner of Handicap Ramp Platform - View 1



Since most of the blogs I read, mine included are currently enjoying the emergence of spring and signs of summer, today I am posting a mystery of a shrub that has literally taken over a corner of the ADA required platform of the handicap ramp, my husband built when my knees were so bad, and which I still use as my main access to and from the front door.

It appeared as a small sprout a few years back, and I assumed a weed cut it down, but it persistently returned. For a time I would ignore it, but a few springs ago I temporarily had a Feathered Leaf Japanese Maple in a whiskey barrel close to the house where there was some shade. I allowed this little bush to thrive so the Japanese Maple would have some shade as when young these trees will literally curl up and die iin extreme summer heat.

View 2 - Bush Encroachment into Ramp

We transplanted the Maple last year to a bed with some shade after it grew to a respectable size, along with another variety of Japanese Maple. We cut back the mystery bush several times last year, but continued to thrive. No water, no fertilizer and interestingly, no signs of disease.

This year it has become as tall as the house with a very round shape and completely enwraps a corner of the handicap turning platform.

Although we did not every plant any privit, I have assumed this is what the bush is, but friends say it does not have the darker gloss of privit. Whatever it is, it has now blocked the window nearest where I sit inside, and is fast consuming the handicap ramp and surrounding area.



View 3 -  Beast of a Bush

You gardeners, botanists, etc. please identify this beast before it ensnares the entire house!

Below are some macros of leaves, and some kind of buds which I suspect are contributing to our pollen
concentrate!

Photos taken in very windy conditions so some are not sharp, but all are taken by NitWit1 unless otherwise attributed.





View 4 - Leaves

View 5 - Macro of Buds