Today was the perfect day to get some outdoor chores done. I started in the orchard garden cleaning up the raspberry canes, pruning off the dead canes, and cutting the living canes down to 3-4 feet.

I cut back the iochroma, as well, and the Sophora japonica suckers. Then, I tackled the camellia, taking it back far enough to reset the berry trellises that were falling over from the camellia pressure. I cleaned up all the berry canes. It does not look like we will get too many blackberries this year on the thornless canes but there are many tayberry canes and I am hoping they make up for the blackberries. The black raspberries look pretty weak this year, too. I will get some organic berry food and give them a boost.

Moving across to the driveway bed, I propped one of the columnar apple trees up away from the sculpture it was leaning against. There is a bunch more pruning to do–maybe next weekend.

My big priority today was to clean up the road next to the memory bed and the sidewalk on the other side of it. It was so much work getting the fir needles and random dirt scraped up! It looks so infinitely better, though. I will revisit it again after a few dry days and sweep up the rest of the debris. Much progress was made today.

There are some beautiful flowers around the garden and greenhouse, so here are some photos.