Let the Gardening Begin!

Today, I began my gardening for the season. Last year, when we arrived here, it was already August and we had a lot of other things that needed to be done so we got by with the bare minimum of pruning the very overgrown hedges and killing the outrageous weeds. This year, I am hoping for more. But, I've got to be quick about it since I will be leaving here in just over a month!

Many of my neighbors have all started to "tinker" out in their yards as it has become bearable to spend a lengthy amount of time outside this past week (in the mid 60's). I know it couldn't be helped last year, but this year, I don't want my house to be viewed as "one of the American renter homes".

As I've said in the past, I live in a duplex. When it comes to our backyards, they are partitioned off by a portion of privacy fence and the other part a half fence all adorned by grapevines and ivy. In other words, if we are both out on our patios, we cannot see each other, but if we are out on the grass, we can see into each other's yards but we'd have to do the high-jump to get into each other's backyards. But, there's a clear line as to what is ours and what is theirs.

The front yard is not partitioned off. But, you can visualize a "line" where my house ends and their house begins. Only problem is, I think everyone has always just visualized that line and now there is a two-foot area that is all moss, grass and weeds! So, with the move of our former neighbors and our new neighbors not coming for two more months, I have decided to take advantage of this time and do what I want with "our side". Actually, I AM going to make it more obvious where the "line" is. I am going to pull up all the moss, grass, weeds, ground cover etc and lay down mulch. On my side, I am going to mulch around everything and yesterday I already started thinning out the bushes--there are nine of them--they are all about my height. I think they are all too wild looking, they are too bushy and no one has bothered to prune underneath them in what looks like forever. I also weeded and planted 30 flowers around my steps. With all the bushes there really isn't that much area to plant flowers. However, with the weeding that I did yesterday I discovered a few more areas that could use some perennials. I just don't know what kind yet.

As I started gardening, what I hoped would be two large parts of two of my days looks like it could take much, much longer. The yard has been greatly neglected for a long time.

Where were the kids during all of this, you may wonder...Toby took a nice, long nap and when he woke up, I opened the front door, and blocked him off with a baby gate. Thomas was with me the whole time, either digging in the dirt or examining bugs and worms and basically torturing them until he would declare, "oh, I think I killed them". Which is actually saying a lot because even a year ago, if he would have saw the bugs or worms, he would have screamed and probably wanted to go indoors! But, Thomas was also my "good helper", making the pile of branches and weeds as I cleaned out the flowerbeds.

Until later,

Emily