Shrubbery

After trimming my owl ent tree I turned my attention to the shrubs around the house.   I had last trimmed them down in height back five years ago - give or take a year.  They had grown in height again and now were as tall as my TV antenna.

On windy days it *seemed* like the TV picture would fluctuate and I wondered if the trees were affecting the signal.  It is not a stretch to think so as people living in different parts of the Valley have told me they get different amounts of channels.  Their numbers always seems to be less than what I get.

I trimmed all the shrubs down in height lower than when I first trimmed them years ago.  Back then I was concerned about cutting too much from the shrubs and killing them so I limited how much I cut to about a third of the shrub, even though looking at the shrubs now I would like to cut them down further.

As you can see I could have cut more this time as they still are above the roof where they are located and they still overpower the house.  I decided to let them be near the height of the tallest roof's peak for now and think about cutting them to the roof's height next Fall.

Also, cutting them down to the roof level would have meant cutting them almost in half.  And I couldn't cut the shorter shrub on the right side lower right now without seriously killing some of the interior branches.  I didn't want the taller shrub next to it be at the same level as the lower part against the shorter shrub already has no branches on that side.  I need to trim the shorter shrub back little by little and give the taller shrub time to reestablish branches on that side.

These photos show how I trimmed the shrub south of the house.