I’m pleased to say that the whole gardening experiment has turned out to be very successful so far. All of my plants except one have taken root and are spreading out and thriving and looking colorful and pretty. We ordered a bench to put in the back yard, and it looks great already, tucked up against the fence with hanging baskets of flowers on either side. Next weekend I’m going to try my hand at filling the planters we bought to go next to the bench. Plus we have to get something to put in the bear planter the former owners left behind. I know a bear planter sounds lame, but it is actually kind of cute. I’ll put up a photo once it is fulfilling its planter destiny.
I spent a bunch of time in the garden today because a) weeds, fucking weeds and b) the shrubbery needed trimming. The tricky part about the weeding is that I don’t always know what is a weed and what is a plant that I want to keep. I was mostly ok in the back yard, particularly in my converted sandbox, because I picked out all of those plants myself. But in the front? Aside from the obvious (dandelions and grass out of place) I pretty much just decided what had to go based on whether or not I liked the look of the leaves.
I also discovered that trimming hedges is way more work than I thought it would be. It is amazing how much time you can spend hacking away at a bush, only to have it look like you haven’t done anything. In the end, I won the battle of the hedges, but wow, are my hands and wrists sore. I think I discovered muscles in my wrists that I’ve never used before. But, totally worth it. I'm really enjoying figuring all of this stuff out.
