Honeysuckle

My honeysuckle is blooming. I just love that smell! I love honeysuckle, lily-of-the-valley and lilac, and I have all three in my garden/backyard. Lucky me! Now all I need is some jasmine and I'm all set.

I was not intending on having a honeysuckle vine. But I was in Lowe's garden center a couple of years ago, looking for other stuff, and that smell caught my nose. I followed it to the honeysuckle, and I was a goner. The thing grew so fast that I ended up putting up an eight-foot garden arch (some assembly required - you should have seen me that day!). Now the honeysuckle has grown to the top of the arch and is exploring other venues. I think I'll take some cuttings and see if I can get them started along the back fence.

Last winter, after the honeysuckle had died back, we had one wind storm after another. And that garden arch kept toppling over, and over, and over. It was no fun coming home in the dark and cold and having to wrestle that thing back into place. I looked into setting the arch into cement, but that looked like waaaay too much work. Plus I'm an idiot, and if anybody could screw up a cement job, it's certainly me. So I took a chunk of old tree trunk and some rocks and piled them around the bottom of the arch, and that worked pretty good. This spring I took a big old tree branch that had fallen off one of the trees and wedged it over the bottom rungs of the arch, to make it more bottom-heavy. Cause I really, really don't want to have to try to un-topple that thing again!