brown shrubs

This morning, my good friend and his landscaper came over to my house to take a look at the condition of my yard. Needless to say, the news was not good. The diagnosis? Fireblight. Apparent this highly infectious disease is like a cancer for plants. It spreads quickly and there is no known cure. The only course of treatment is radical aggressive amputation. The diseased portions of the plants must be cut out, and an additional 8 inches of “good” plant material from the point of disease must be pruned as well.

What can I say. I’m going have to throw a funeral for the shrubs the succumbed to the illness. They fought a good fight.

Since the bacteria spreads really easily, removal will probably require wearing gloves and burning or discarding the trash. I’m told to make sure that none of it spreads to the ground where it will infect other surrounding plants. It affects both shrubs and trees, so you can’t be too careful. It sounds so toxic and the results so damaging, I’m wondering if it infects humans as well?

Needless to say, I’m not happy. It’s killed a couple of the junipers that border my neighbor’s yard and also a bunch of the shrubs on the berm behind my house. I’m a bit apprehensive since I haven’t received the bill from the landscape doctor yet. Keeping my gloves on and fingers crossed.

Let me give you some background here. I’ve never had much of a green thumb. I’d really like to blame it on the lack of horticulture education for city dwellers (I was born in New York City) but it’s really not a good excuse. I’ve never been all that great about keeping plants alive, or understood the appeal of plants. Sure, sure, they freshen the air and replace all the carbon dioxide with lifegiving oxygen and all that photosynthesis stuff you learn in college. But seriously, who really takes houseplants seriously? After some friends recently reorganized and redecorated my house, they told me I needed a houseplant. Since I refuse to have a fake plastic ficus, I turned to my local home improvement store and brought home a few plants. I’m really not sure what kind they are, but they are green and have a year guarantee. I’ve had to take advantage of that guarantee a couple times already. When the leaves change color, I’m never sure if I’m over watering, under watering, of it is just natural for some leaves to change colors.

The great part of a houseplant is it is totally portable and easily replaced. Plus it’s indoors and totally private. What a contrast to my outdoor landscaping.

I realized in the past couple of weeks that a bunch of my outdoor shrubs have mysteriously died. I’m not sure if it’s an infection, an infestation, or if it’s simply the heat. I’m not even sure what kind of shrubs I have, so I can’t just google and research what is causing the problem. I’m really embarrassed at the condition of my landscaping and just glad I don’t know many of my neighbors (and they don’t know me), but I can just hear the fingerpointing and whispers as I drive through the neighborhood, “Psss, that guy over there, he’’s the guy that keeps killing his plants.”

My dad insists that plants are like pets, sometimes they simply die of old age and it’s probably much cheaper to replace them than cure them.

We’ll see about that. I’m calling the shrub doctor tomorrow.