Yellow Witchhazel

The rain finally let up this late afternoon and I spent a little time outside with the cats. While I had high hope of getting some more gardening done this weekend, the only thing I checked off my mental to-do list was "cleaning up" the witch-hazel in the sunset flowerbed. While I really enjoy witch-hazels, especially in the Fall and Winter, I don't appreciate their habit of hanging on to their old leaves. It seems each year that only around half of the leaves fall off the plant and the rest just hand on to the plant, brown and soggy. So this afternoon I gently pinched off all of last year's leaves. Now we have a very pretty plant covered in sunny, yellow blooms. Such a welcome bit of color on these grey, rainy days.