Last year was a big year of changes and I've been trying to adapt ever since. This long holiday weekend I continued on our efforts to get the garden back in order. Tiny steps you know.
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From a distance it was still somewhat passable, but eventually I could no longer deny that the front yard needed some serious help. The white picket fence I'd once loved was in need of a good coat of paint, which I considered until finding out the wood was mostly rotten. And the purple barberry bushed were overgrown and dying. Not to mention their copious thorns which stuck me every time I tried to garden around them, no matter how thick my gloves or careful I was.
So early this spring the boyfriend pulled out the bushes with his truck (I guess there's a redneck side to all of us, but it was fast and it worked) and pulled out the fence. We loaded up the bushes in his truck and after a stressful drive where I fretted about us losing our precariously balanced load all over the road, we made it to the compost site and got rid of those suckers.
Then I weeded and weeded, and planned and shopped for something to replace the bushes with. The boyfriend campaigned for flowers only (no more pesky overgrown bush issues with those), while I thought we needed something bigger to fill the large gaps.
Thursday evening I went to the garden center and spent a lovely evening picking out two dwarf butterfly bushes, a baptisa smoke, three Veronica speedwell plants, lavender and an obedient plant. Then on Friday and Saturday I weeded some more, amended the soil, moved plants, planted new ones and mulched.
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My body still aches from the effort, but finally it's finished and I'm pretty pleased with the result.
It looks lovely! I need to do something similar to my front garden...though I shan't be pulling out any bushes with a truck :)
ReplyDeleteThe tree in the front garden needs a good trim, as it requires you to duck to get under it...and the whole thing needs a lot of weeding and general taming!
Maybe I will finally sort it out this week...
Thank you! Our front tree needs trimmed as well. Ditto on the ducking. Always something, isn't it?
DeleteI agree... it looks beautiful! I have no idea what an "obedient plant" is, but seriously, I'd love it if my plants followed directions better! :-)
ReplyDeleteOne good thing about all of our rain is that I was able to pull out a few chokecherry and Siberian elms that had taken root. Die, suckers die!!! :-)
Thanks Cat! I only found out what an obedient plant is when I saw it at the garden center, liked it and checked the tag. The jury is still out on how well it will behave. :)
Deletespectacular! Being a high-rise dweller means that I truly enjoy other people's gardens because I don't get to have an in-ground one myself. Keep it up!
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