Moving a lot of plants and rant

These past few weekends were nothing but slave, slave, slave. I sited, marked and transplanted 15 one year old japanese maple grafts and one green leafed mutant from our "Bloodgood" and a 2 year old graft "Oshio Beni".

I also transplanted 5 shad blow serviceberries "Amelanchier canadensis" and moved two azaleas which were growing into a weeping red dissectum japanese maple.

Last week it was planting 6 clump river birches to screen out houses being built beyond our backyard and moving 5 misplanted (mis-sited) evergreens and a Chinese redbud, to block out more of the side neighbor. Then mowing our ever diminishing lawn as I slowy convert more of it into planting. The lawn is a nuisance getting infested with annual grasses and weeds like creeping charlie, dandelions, sedges and chickweed. I tried to do without pesticide/herbicides but I'm losing the battle badly. So converting the lawn to berms and planting beds is a priority.

By this you would think we are antisocial recluses but we seem to live in a neighborhood of plant/trees haters and only do this in self defense to compensate for the lack of greenery. Well not so much haters as they are terribly ambivalent towards plants. Their yards are essentially barren except for the occasional tree and obligatory shrubs around the house. But they pay great homage to the lawn thanks to lawn services who duitifully spray fetilizers and pesticides in abundance and mow weekly. No wonder all the rivers and streams are so heavily laden with chemical runoff. I've seen large 3,500-5,000 sq. feet homes with an acre of land all in grass with almost no plantings in our township. And this is more than 10 years after the houses were built. Did they run out of money to do the landscaping after buying a lavish home? Well enough for the rant.

PS: The yellow magnolia did turn out to be "Butterflies".