weed my garden

I went out to pull weeds for at least 15 minutes twice last week – Monday and Wednesday. Yesterday I spent another hour, and actually made a significant dent in the overgrowth at the far end of the yard, around the emerging canna & calla lily stalks.

I doubt I’ll have time today to go out again, and in fact this whole week seems too busy to fit it in, but I’m determined to weed every bed around both the front and back yards at least once in the next month, so I’ll just have to make the time.

Holding the expectation to 15-minute increments helps a great deal to keep me from feeling overwhelmed by how much there is to do. A team of yard boys wouldn’t hurt either, but so far nobody has volunteered :oP

On my way back toward the house from the shed the other night I realized how bad the weeds have become in almost every one of my garden beds AND in the lawn. It’s so bad right now that for a brief moment I thought I might cry. I felt entirely defeated – this yard is beginning to look like the yard of an abandoned house!

But I didn’t cry. Instead I resolved to get out for at least 15 minutes an evening to pull weeds. The night before last, despite the steamy heat, Marty got out the lawn mower and I got out my gloves and spade and we spent about 45 minutes making our separate efforts to tidy the place up.

Having the grass freshly cut made a significant impact to the appearance of the yard on the whole, of course; while I worked hard and weeded quite a large area around the cannas and calla lilies, the difference was noticeable only to me, I’m sure.

I didn’t get out last night to continue, but I’m going to spend 15 minutes this morning. I have, in my head, sort of divided up the yard into smaller sections so as not to get overwhelmed again by how MUCH there is yet to do. I just have to pluck away at it, little by little. It’s surprising how much area I can cover in just 15 minutes, and I welcome the fresh air, exercise and time in the garden.

...well, after 2×2 hours sessions of mulch spreading, I’m about a quarter of the way through the pile. It’s a big pile. Mind you, there was a lot of general weeding, taking-apart-dodgy-bits-of-fence, cat patting, etc that went on in that time…

The gardeners came out again on Friday & chopped down the remaining weedy bits at the back, repoisoned the weeds trees that have resprouted & took all the debris away.

There is still a HEAP of mulch to be spread…

Got out into the yard today & poisoned a tree that’s trying to grow out of the side of our house! Score 1 for persistance… Also took out ANOTHER bit of oleander that’s sprung up.

Bit by bit…!

Tree lopper came, lopped & then mulched the lot! Now I just have to tidy up weedy edge bits & spread the mulch to suppress further weeds.

Finding the time is going to be the problem…

We just got a quote from the tree lopper, who’s going to come out & cut down remaining weed trees, take off the lower branches of a bigger tree near the house & mulch THE LOT, including the debris still in the yard from the gardening guys the other day.

This is happening on Thursday! Yay!

...the garden blokes with the chainsaws turned up and chopped down about 3 quarters of what needed to go! We are waiting on a call from the arborist to cut and mulch 2 bigger weed trees. Yay!

...we had a friend who runs a gardening business look through our garden the other day. Apparently MOST of the trees in our garden are weeds!! Aaaargh!!!

Whilst we’re certainly not going to slash and burn the whole place, we ARE going to get our friend’s business to chop a lot of them down… THEN we’re going to spend forever feeding them to a shredder… THEN they can become mulch to stop further ‘weed tree’ outbreaks!

It’s November and the few weeds remaining seem puny and shriveled. Now the problem will be next season when those that were allowed to set seed come back with a vengeance!

In the metaphorical sense of the goal, I’ve still got some work to do.