Charting the sun

We had a beautiful holiday weekend here and spent lots of time in the yard. In addition to playing with our son, we mowed and mulched and planted. I also did an experiment to see how much sun different parts of the yard get over the course of a day. Before I plant all those lovely shrubs I bought, I want to make sure the locations I've chosen are appropriate. So I set the shrubs, in their pots, in the proposed spots and then noted the sunlight in each location once an hour through the day. The verdict? The home I chose for the bush clover is a poor one- too much shade. But the other spots seem to qualify as "full sun" (6-8 hours per day) so I'll begin planting the shrubs soon. A nice bonus is that I now have a little chart of sun exposure for the entire back yard that I can use as a quick reference for future planting.

Our roses are just coming into bloom, although some nasty little green worms are eating up their leaves. My Rio Samba rose has almost been skeletonized. After googling a bit, I suspect something called "sawfly larvae"- EWWWWW. A frequently suggested remedy is insecticidal soap, so guess what I'll be doing today?