Lemons, Blackberries, and Roses

Popping by the house last night, I was finally able to remember to take some pictures (after going back to the car for the camera). Like I wrote last week, I decided to let Patrick take off some limbs on the lemon tree. I did the supervising as he would have just cut off too much if he was in charge and we didn't cut far enough down on the major limbs because we don't have a small enough saw. But there's still a noticeable difference.

First

Second

Third

So... the tree has shrunk quite a bit... In fact, it looks just plain odd in person but it's better off for it. Now, you might say that from these pictures, we've butchered the tree but it has been so badly pruned so many times that those big side branches were corkscrewing their way into the canopy and completely tangled with all the other branches. We'd actually like to take off the one remaining side branch as well but that's probably half the remaining canopy. It will fill in more in the next year if we take care of it and prune a bit more the badly crossing branches but I don't know if we will. Patrick is more than ready to just chop it down. But I've decided that we have to plant some other trees before we can remove the lemon. I think we'll start with three trees - one near the back left corner, one nearly centered on the back fence and one a bit in front of the roses on the left side (moving the roses eventually as well as the wall).

Something else we'll be removing eventually are the blackberry brambles. We've cut away all the little start ups around the main stand already but I'm telling Patrick again to leave the bush for a bit longer. There are hundreds of little red and green berries on it, ripening up and as they look so nice, I say we have to wait until their all ripe and picked before we cut it down.

Personally, I've never really eaten many blackberries, but I could see keeping a few of the young canes for more berries next year. It really just depends on what we find when we cut into the bushes later this fall. If I can find a few tall, straight first year canes inside there, and if I can successfully transplant them, I'll make sure the fruit is really nice next year. But as is, they are just where I would like to put a couple of bushes and one really big tree eventually.

Lastly, the roses. You can see the bushes thinning out in the pictures above, but I'd like to give you a bit of proper before and after shots because that was quite a job.

And now for the after shots (Also you can see what I was saying about the wall yesterday)

Having not been pruned in a couple years probably, the bushes are now looking a bit thin. I took out all the weeds and dead branches and then some of the healthy growth that was in the completely wrong place but tried to leave as many leaves as possible. So now they are a bit taller than I would like, but once winter comes round, I will cut them all down and hopefully, they be more beautiful than ever next year.

Now to end this entry, I'll give you a couple of rose close-ups.