Landscaping When Everything Must Be At Least Two Feet Off the Ground

Jackson, my dear, sweet, sweet boy, brings many challenges to our lives. I, for the most part, embrace his "enthusiasm" and understand he has the best of intentions. But, there is one thing I've been struggling with lately. Landscaping. When we moved into our house, there was this lovely row of little pine trees lining our back fence. They were full, plush from the ground up and green as can be. However Jackson also moved in, and he started his "watering" campaign immediately...

Jackson's theory is that the higher up the tree you "water", the more fun it is. If Jackson leans WAY to one side (I'll have to take a picture of that because it is a sight to see!), then he can hit just about the 2 foot mark. Some days he "waters" all of the trees along the back fence. He also enjoys "watering" the flowers and the barbaque grill cover, but those are different stories.

For three years now, Chris and I have been going out in the backyard, standing with hands on our hips and frowning at our pine trees. Over those three years, the trees started out drooping a bit on the bottom, then the needles started turning brown, then the needles started falling out. After three years, every single tree had a 2 foot ring around the bottom of dead, needleless, brown branches.

So what do you do? Replace the trees so Jackson can ruin new trees? Tear out the trees so Jackson has more direct access to the crazy dog behind us that barks like a maniac through the fence all the time? Hardly...

So I made a decision. I was going to turn our regular old little pine trees (that probably isn't even what the are...but close enough) into ornamental bushes. I carried the electric branch saw thing to the backyard, brought the powercords out, stepped back, put the saw down, went and got Chris, then had him cut the branches off. (Sometimes I get a bit too enthusiastic at projects like this, and I probably would have ended up cutting all the branches off until all that was left was the tree base, sticking up like a pole along the fence.) So, Chris cut, and I stood by saying "cut more off," and he rolled his eyes at me, reminding me that you can always cut more, but you can't put it back, and I rolled my eyes at him and said "cut more off." Ultimately, this is what we ended up with. I kind of like it. Thank you Jackson for being my landscaping inspiration!!!