2024, gardening, home, Uncategorized

Let The Sunshine In

25 Comments

About 30 years ago, Husband and I planted raspberries in the back yard against the north fence. Our neighbors to the north had four green ash trees in the corners of their yard. The trees weren’t all that tall and didn’t shade our yard much at all. The raspberries did well, and we feasted on raspberries every summer for years.

The green ash trees in the yard to the north of us have grown really tall and shade the whole north side of our yard now. I have written before about the conflicts we have had with the neighbors regarding the trees, and how the branches hang over our yard and house. The neighbors got really angry every time we tried to trim the branches that hung over our side of the fence, so we just gave up. The trees just kept dropping branches and looking really sick.

The raspberry bed became more and more shaded, and there were fewer and fewer canes until this spring. Over the past year our northern neighbors changed their intense love of the ash trees to extreme loathing after they realized that their 45 year old fence needed to be replaced, and that the ash branches could possibly damage the new fence when it is put in. They sent one of their adult sons to start trimming the tree branches. They will eventually need a professional tree removal service to take the trees out, but the trimming their son did provided all sorts of light to the raspberries last summer. This spring we noticed that there were more raspberry canes than we could have possibly imagined. You can see how thick they are.

It is amazing what a little sun did. It was as though the raspberries were biding their time until the situation improved. Here is the tree that did all the mischief.

What songs, plays, literature, or movies come to mind when you hear the word “Sun”. What are your favorite sunny or shady spots in your yard?

25 thoughts on “Let The Sunshine In”

    1. Rise and Shine Baboons, from JacAnon,

      OT We awoke this morning with power after yet another outage last night. That is the third one since Saturday.

      The south side of our house has two enormous silver maple trees that provide shade and maple “helicopter” seeds that clog our eaves troughs. There was also a large ash tree at the back which has succumbed to the ash borer, so that is now gone. Lou planted a collection of hostas beneath the trees. One of these will have to come out soon, because I planted an oak tree nearby to replace it, but that will be a difficult (and expensive) tree extraction, given where it is.

      Our raspberries are in plenty of sunshine, but the crop has been minimal the last several years due to Asian beetles and rabbits (winter feeding) which decimated them. This year I tried spraying nematodes which are rumored to eat the eggs of the beetles. So far it may be working. They look good this year. But it is early.

      Today I am weeding. It is cool and cloudy, and the ground is damp. Perfect weeding weather.

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  5. We have huge cottonwoods in our and the neighbors’ backyards which give us a lot of shade in the afternoon and early evening. Best place is on our screen porch shaded by those trees on a hot day with a cooling breeze wafting through the screens. The hosta garden loves those cottonwoods too.

    Songs? “Sunny” by _______ (a ’60s group). “Let the Sun Shine” from “Hair.”

    Movies? “Empire of the Sun,” “Under the Tuscan Sun.”

    Chris in Owatonna

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  8. My daughter just yesterday lost a huge shade tree in their yard. She saw a deep crack opening in the main fork and called the church council president. He immediately called a tree service. It was rotten inside to the ground and deeper. It would have taken out much of the roof.

    Raisin in the Sun, Hurry Sundown ah, um er . . .

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  10. Songs:

    Sundown – Gordon Lightfoot

    You Are the Sunshine of My Life – Stevie Wonder

    House of the Rising Sun – The Animals

    Sunshine Superman – Donovan

    I’ll Follow the Sun & Good Morning Sunshine – The Beatles

    Movies:

    Sunset Boulevard

    The Sundowners

    The Sun Also Rises

    A Raisin in the Sun

    I know there are many more in both categories.

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  12. I watched last weekend, an the excellent WW2 film, A Walk In The Sun.

    “No one dies.” A hopeful phrase that proves untrue for Sterling Holloway’s character.

    I’ll be watching A Raisin In The Sun this Juneteenth.

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  15. We have a lovely shady corner under an Amur maple with tons of ostrich ferns and bleeding hearts. Most of the new canes won’t bear this year, but will next year. Bunnies leave our canes alone.

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  16. Our deck is on the NW corner of our house and there are several large walnut trees to the West of it. It’s got shade in the morning, an edge of shade in the early afternoon, and and then all afternoon, the walnut trees shade the rest. It’s a lovely place. However, it also get’s algae growth because it never gets enough sunshine. So, that’s annoying.

    Good job on the sunshine songs!

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