The Huge Weed at Our Vacation Home

We have lived in I  beautiful Ontario, Canada most of our lives so we are used to gardening in Zone 6A.  We know what is considered weeds and what isn't.  Our vacation home is in US Hardiness Zone 9B.  We bought it in March of 2010 but did not see it until May of 2010.  The house had been empty for over a year so there was a bit of overgrowth.  While we have become accustomed to some of the plants at our vacation home, we are still very much newbies to gardeing in this zone.

We spent a couple of weeks in May at our vacation home.  A neighbour behind us mentioned we had a weed at the back of the house.  I looked at the 'weed' but it looked like a small tree to me so we left it.  When we arrived at our vacation home in September, the small tree was huge!  I honestly could not believe that a 'tree' that was about two feet tall when we left in May was well over ten feet tall .  To make matters worse there were a couple more of the free trees in our garden.  Apparently the rainy season was very generous to us!

Now, I still would have left this woody weed.  To me it looked like a tree.  We hired another resident in our resort community to clean-up our gardens.  He never told us what the plant was but he did confirm that it was indeed considered a weed.  We gave him full reign to remove any plant in the gardens that wasn't considered ornamental.  I picked his brains about the care and maintenance of the existing plants.

Pictured is the back of the house with the huge weed removed and bushes shaped.  He removed the stump the following day.  Now all of the bushes have been shaped we will be able to maintain the gardens easier.  The gentleman we hired was originally going to maintain the gardens each month but before we left he said he would not be able to due to increased reactions to fire ant bites.  We have not noticed any fire ants around our house.  At any rate we are now in the position of looking for another gardener to care for out property when we aren't there.

The reality is we spend about three months of the year at our vacation home but it is spread out two to five weeks at a time May, September and December.  We rent the property out January through April but the tenants do not do any yard work.  The resort does the yard mowing and trimming so at least we don't have to worry about that.   The rainy season is June through August precisely when we aren't there to catch any problems as they happen before they become big problems.

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
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