The bird nest is still looking good!

Pruning bushes and thinning out plants to let in air and light for them to grow and stay healthy is a gargantuan task in our garden. Somehow all those plants that were once so little have spread out and grown into trees and huge shrubs.

Yes, that is the intention of planting, but this January project always runs through February since I only have the weekends to work in the garden and doing this alone takes days of energy and time.

Fortunately my friend Anne was able to come over and help me yesterday. Working together was fun and really lightened my workload. While pruning large branches and trimming excess stems, I always discover things that would otherwise be overlooked. Here, again, is the bird nest that I wrote about in a post a few months ago.

Now that there is very little foliage on the rosebushes, the nest is more visible, at least, to me. And it still is in great shape! You can see how this nest was built on an intersection of branches so it is very stable. What clever birds!

Although I would normally cut off all the dried branches that have turned into wood, in this case, I'll leave them alone so that the nest will remain intact, ready for new residents in the spring.