It’s a glorious 76 degrees (F) outside with mostly clear skies.  I sawed some branches that needed to be cut down to size.  When my elbow began to hurt from the repetition, I moved on to an experiment.

We have thirteen crape myrtles along our back property line that have been allowed to get completely out of hand before we bought the house.  We have another ten or so that due to local zoning have to be kept shorter than four feet tall.  I know properly cared for crepe myrtles can be lovely, but ours had vines growing in them, and they’d been allowed to bush out.  I started on one side of the driveway and began trimming back the overgrowth and cutting out the vines.  So far, I’ve done a tree on each side of the driveway, and they look loads better.  Since these are tree height, I decided to leave the tops on instead of trimming them back the way I would with smaller versions.

I have eleven more of the full-size versions to go and then  the ones that have to be kept cut back.  We’ll eventually remove the latter in favor of a plant that naturally stays shorter, but, for now, I have to keep them unnaturally groomed .

Our downstairs heating unit is on the fritz — I suspect it needs a relay or something similar.  Our heating and A/C guy is under the weather, so he won’t be able to stop by until next week.  The weather is supposed to be decent until Monday morning when temperatures will drop to the high thirties and low forties.  Fortunately, our upstairs units are working fine, so it’s only a mind inconvenience.  It also helps that the weather is comfortable for the moment.

Hershey’s been doing a great job of meeting his New Year’s resolution by taking me for a daily walk.  How’s your new year starting out?