Clematis blogging

Just a little eye candy for you. This little clematis is growing up one of my holly topiaries. The land we are on was cleared about thirty years ago. The Federal Government was offering free land if you cleared it for farming! So one of the previous owners received 20 acres for cutting down a red cedar grove and bulldozing about one acre of the 20. So the next trees to come up were the Alders, then the hollies. There are still some of the old cedar stumps around down near the creek. One of them is hollow and you can climb up on it and look into it. You can just see the bottom where the stump opens into a small cavern well below ground level. In the winter there is an underground stream running through it. Creeepy! I'm quite sure that's where the bats live.
So, getting back to the hollies, they really seem to like it here because they are growing out of control. My solution to keep them at bay is to eventually turn them all into topiary. For now, I will keep it simple but my vision is for something akin to a Dr. Zeuss illustration.

Zeeble-blatt bushes and Toomby-snoot trees.