Siebold Snipped.

6-14-12 SHORT HILLS: Yesterday I transplanted three bleeding hearts that I had brought down from VT. They look a little beat up, but will probably be fine. I have had some successful bleeding hearts here, but they haven’t made any seed pods. In VT they make thousands of seeds and spread readily, especially in shady areas. I’d rather have them self-spreading than weeds which are only too happy to volunteer.

Today I did an extensive pruning of a Siebold viburnum. They grow and spread readily to the point that they can be considered invasive, but are an attractive shrub with mounds of white flowers in the spring. They can easily get to twenty and even thirty feet tall, usually with mutiple trunks. One odd feature is the odor of a crushed leaf—burning rubber. Anyway, one was growing over and hanging over a magnolia, an apple and a redbud. I took that trunk down to about five feet, last year I had done the same to the other trunk. I like them, they’re great for screening, but need controlling. There are about twenty, one-foot-tall volunteers under the one I pruned, and I will probably weed-whack most of them. All the prunings made a carload for the dump.

New blooms: variegated Jacobs ladder.
 
Cabbage White Butterfly, male.
 
Hydrangea.
 
Spirea.