branching out with team overgrown

As promised, I spent the whole day gardening, as my corned beef and cabbage simmered away on the stove. Now not only is my front yard decorated with piles of branches, my back yard is, too. I need a chipper, and stat.

Two of the projects I dealt with involved overgrown and poorly tended fruit: my plum tree and my grapes. The apple tree, which is relatively young, was sort of trained to be an espalier tree, so the pruning was easy (if not totally ugly). The plum tree is large, maybe 50 feet tall, and full of shooters, crossed branches, and the results of the chop-down-random-limbs method. It took me about an hour just to get the shooters, and I couldn't even finish without a chain saw.

The grapes, pictured above before pruning, really need to be planted on a better trellis, but that's not going to happen. Some vines were forcing between the fence boards, and others were entwined in those of the neighboring plant. The neighbor I mentioned in my last two entries actually did the upkeep for the vines, so there is a chicken wire fence enclosing each plant. Not exactly the way I'd do it, but I'm grateful that SOMEONE was watching over the yard, since it wasn't the PO. The problem is that the new growth canes get caught in the fencing and grow into it. The grape vines are at least 20 years old, and the base of the plants are a bit twisted and misshapen. I'm just going to see what happens this year and expect a poor harvest.

The second problem is that some dumb@&# m*&#^rf@&*er planted a wisteria tree next to the grapes. I hate wisteria. Not only is it gaudy, I despise lavender-colored anything (except, well, lavender) and it has got to be one of the most destructive, insidious plants in the western world. Scroll down to the bottom of this page for an example of a "well-tended" wisteria. It still has designs on the house, you see. It crouches and looms, waiting for a moment's distraction, and will wrap its lavender monster chokehold around the porch or pull down the roof or push up the foundation. They do that. I'm not joking. Here's one trying to rip down the walls of a house. Here's another house under attack. And here's one sensible person who recognizes the threat (scroll down to 9/27/06).

My wisteria is not nearly as bad as the ones you see above, still, it is on the slow and relentless attack inborn in the species. Someon (I presume, the neighbor) tried to hold it up by a small wood trellis, which it snaked around and tried to crush into matchsticks. I had to extract the pieces of the trellis from the vine, then I had to try to force the thing back to being perpedicular to the ground with a makeshift support, as it was leaning at about 75 degrees. Then, the fun began, and I started severing vines and the most horrible, evil suckers in the universe, which shoot out just under the ground for dozens of feet in every direction and root, seeking new lands to destroy. I only could elminate a small percentage of the suckers because of the makeshift concrete/chicken wire fence between my yard and the neighbors' yard. The suckers are four or five layers DEEP along with wall.

So my question is why would anyone want a plant like this? It's ridiculous. I'm going to get rid of it after it blooms in the spring. I just can't spend all my time in the garden doing battle with the lavender monster.