Cleaning up

As I write this there are still about 200,000 people ithout power on Long Island. Many right in my village here are still suffering. We were very, very blessed. 

But we did have some casualties. Mostly of the shrub species.  Honestly, in a way it was a good thing. Our yard is not what anyone would call pretty. Something to do with zip lines, a pool, several riding toys, soccer, hide and seek and a twice daily fort construction. We have a few flower beds that had become completely unruly.  The flowers that I had planted were largely neglected and overgrown. Our Blessed Mother Statue was starting to disappear among the foliage and the shrubs were completely out of control.

As a yard cleaner Irene was effective. I did not take any before pictures.

Those are my helpers. They are naming the roly poly bugs. They had, Hannah, Hope, Helen, Ashley, Bug boy, June and Ugly before I stopped paying attention. I can't tell you how helpful it was to have the bug naming chore off my hands :).  All of that dirt was covered in weeds and choked plants and now is ready for some fall planting.

See that little orange thing?  Chinese lanterns. They are very pretty. They also grow like kudzu.  They wound in and around every plant in the garden and creeped all over the deck.  I pared us down to two plants and I'll be watching them carefully.

 

See those brown sticks there at the top of the photo. Used to be a butterfly bush. Irene pulled her out of the ground and beat her up proper. I pruned it back and replanted. Hopefully that will work. I like the bush and we were just starting to get butterflies, although they have all probably been blown to Canada so it may not matter this season.

 

Katie kept Bridgie busy while I was wielding shears with fearsome abandone by helping her create a fairy house.  So the flotsam and jetsam of Irene is being well used. See those cute little two year old feet. Yeah, he's waiting for the opportunity to go all Godzilla in Tokyo on that fairy house.  We distracted him with a tent.

Now we have to rake up the 900 million acorns that are all over the yard, they really are a bit of a hazard to middle aged clutzy people. Not that anyone like that lives here.

Happy clean up friends. I'll be back soon.