mulberry tree ~ and a tour of our late june yard

In my last post, I shared about my neighbor's mulberry tree that overhangs our property. That the tree drops mulberries all over our patio, the patio furniture, the plants, walkway...literally everything that's on the south side of our house. And that it was about to start.

It did indeed. Here you can see how the berries are littering the mulch on the walkway to the patio. Impossible to clean up when they're in the mulch.

In this photo you can see how I had to take the cushions off the furniture and put the chairs up against the house. The berries still find their way onto the chairs and get stuck in the crevices. This photo of the berries on the patio isn't even that bad; this was a few hours after I swept. You can see how they're already staining the concrete. Flies are also attracted to the mulberries, so we're dealing with those nasty insects, too.

My poor plants are getting socked by the berries. The Bishops Cap is a more delicate plant, and it's falling over from the weight of the berries constantly falling on it.

Some of you commented on my last post and also emailed me about having our neighbor's tree trimmed. For reference, those tall overhanging branches you see in the next photo are part of the mulberry tree. They're about 40 feet high. The wooden fence is hers. It sits right on our property line. We don't mind those low hanging branches in back of the patio. They don't cause any problems and provide shade for our patio.

We've had the mulberry tree trimmed twice in the past six years: once every three years. We are legally allowed to have her trees trimmed back to her property line. Here's the problems: 1) The tree trimmers can't reach those highest branches. There's no room for a cherry picker truck in our front yard. And she will not allow the tree trimmer workers onto her property to climb the tree to trim it. 2) Without getting into too much detail, the neighbor is a mean, nasty person. She has caused us a lot of problems over the years. Each time we've hired a tree service to trim her overhanging trees (which costs a lot of money), we've written a letter ahead of time and mailed it to her Certified Mail Return Receipt (which she did indeed sign) to let her know the date her trees would be trimmed. 

Three years ago when we last did this, she made sure she took the day off work and flew out of her house, yelling and screaming at the workers because they had to step onto her property to cut some of the branches. She even threatened to call the police. I had warned the workers ahead of time about her, but they told me afterwards that they had never encountered anyone quite like her. 

(The "offending" tree)...

After the tree trimming guys left, I went to the police station to let them know the whole scenario in case she decided to contact them. The policeman took a report and said to me, "I don't understand. You're doing her a favor!" 

On to more positive things. The shady portion of the south side of our house is starting to fill in nicely. The ferns have taken off and the coleus plants between all the hostas are starting to grow, even though you can't really see them in this photo.

Now you can see some of the coleus in a close-up photo.

The plants in the butterfly garden will soon burst into bloom and that's when it will look especially beautiful. From the back coming towards the front of the photo, there's black-eyed susan (the shorter plant), tall garden phlox, bee balm, lamb's ear, sedum, purple coneflower, and columbine. The columbine is now slowly fading away, as it's a spring perennial.

My herb garden in back of the house has mint, lemon balm, red leaf sorrel, two varieties of thyme, oregano, rosemary and chives. I have basil, dill and parsley in pots around other areas of my yard. I don't mind that mint and lemon balm are invasive. They've been in my herb garden for many years and I just pull stalks out when they start spreading too much.

The tomato plants are huge now and have yellow blossoms. Can't wait until we have tomatoes! We were lucky enough to find heirloom tomatoes at a farmer's market this past weekend and there just is no comparison to supermarket tomatoes. Doesn't even taste like the same fruit. (Who else wants to call tomatoes a vegetable? 😏)

An addition to Zippo's memorial garden is this angel kitty statue I found at HomeGoods.

Brian and I were working in the yard the other evening and he spotted this mourning dove couple up in the tree. Aren't they the sweetest?

Have a beautiful week!