Cherry tree surgery

Mum was here for spring training and now the garden looks aMAZing, of course, but she also pointed out some things for me to keep my eye on. One of them was the cherry tree in the front yard, which was never pruned properly as a baby. It was strangling itself, and Mum pointed out exactly which branch needed to go first. Yesterday I got at it.

Before:

See the thin branch headed up and to the left? It was causing a big bruise on the main trunk. There were sewbugs (?so-bugs? carpenters) living in it - yuck!

After:

Before:

This is a view from the back side - you can see that two arms from the renegade branch are wrapping themselves around the main trunk like pincers. Here is the same view, from further out; it just looks messy.

After: better!

Here is one of the "bruises" from the back side - nasty! I hope it will heal up now that it can breathe.
Another worry: is the cut close enough to heal over properly? Or do I need to take it in a little closer?
I found another offending branch a little higher up as well. Got right into this, I did! Notice tidy cut around centre of photo, and another liberated bruise over to the left.

Poor old tree, it still has some problems, but hopefully this will make it a little happier.

Happy Friday the 13th

OK, this is not what is happening in the garden right now, but I've been meaning to post these lovely snow photos for quite some time. Mum took these shots just before Christmas.

Here is early in the morning December 21, after the big "storm":

Later that morning, Colin got busy building the requisite snowman, and then he and his folks had to go catch the Coho back to Port Angeles. The next day, the sun came out, which sent all the photographers in the house scurrying outdoors:

Many artistic shots were obtained:
And the demise of Colin's buddy was well-documented:

I'm happy to report that last Friday, February 6, I bought a (pretty turquoise) snow shovel. I had to do it, it was hanging outside the hardware store in the plaza, taunting me. I knew that if I didn't buy it, a great big snowstorm would roll through. And it has been pretty cold these past few days, but no snow here! (When, in anticipation of the big "storm", I tried to buy a snow shovel at Canadian Tire on December 18, the helpful salespeople could find the inventory on the computer (in silico), but not in the store (in vivo). This sort of sums up for me Victoria's meta-relationship with the rest of Canada.)