Poor little Stumpy is finally and at long last dead.

It’s been a long, hard road for this poor little tree. Last year I thought it was doing pretty well – it had grown and had tons of healthy, green leaves. I think this past January’s hard freeze finally did it in, though. Stumpy is dry and brittle as a bone; two of the limbs just snapped off in my hand. So, it’s finally time to take it out.

I still need to dig out the roots, but that can wait till we decide what to put in there. We’re thinking about a nice rose bush, but there are a lot of nice flowers there, so maybe just a statue or something that doesn’t take any care or watering. I don’t know, yet.

The rest of the yard looks pretty good. There are a few bushes to trim back and I think I might take out that old lavender bush (it’s looked a bit ragged), but pretty much everything else survived the winter.

Even the Behemath is making a comeback:

And, in the next few weeks, we’ll be getting our vegetable plants for the garden – tomatoes and bell peppers for sure, and maybe we’ll try zucchini again, and maybe some lettuces. The parsely, chives and cilantro survived the winter, but I’ll need to get some more basil and dill for the herb pot, and we’ll be all set for Gardening 2007!!

Cheers!