The Burning Bush

Saturday morning I spent a little time weeding and pruning dead branches and plants from the front and side yard beds. We have a little sliver of land to our East (which is more than made up for with the big yard we have to the West) and we have some azaleas and other shrubs to either side of the poor azaleas.

Those are not our leaves but I did rake them up... ;.(

The neighbors used to have a carport that protected these shrubs from the direct sunlight and heat of the day but the dilapidated carport was taken down a few months ago. The heat wave coupled witht the loss of protection has shocked my azaleas and the shrub to the right is history. I decided to replace it with a renegade Yaupon Holly that sprang up in my flower bed, a satellite from another holly in my front yard.

Before

After

Might be a little hard to tell the difference because there's still so much brown around.

Baby Yaupon

Scott suggested that we replace the azaleas with a nice crape myrtle and I think that's a perfect idea since our crape myrtle is doing great despite the heat.

Lovely and fragant...

I did not know until Saturday that crape myrtle flowers were fragrant! Did you? This crape myrtle has been in our yard for a couple of years now and I've never noticed. On Saturday when I was weeding in the front yard I kept thinking that a neighbor was drying laundry and that their fabric softener was so strong.  Then I smelled the myrtle's blooms and was pleasantly surprised. After the magnolia stopped blooming I thought that was it for fragrant blooms...

I'm gonna prune the azaleas a bit and pray that they make it. They are so gorgeous in the spring. See?

Spring 2010