gardening

I heard Don tell his sister that I used to be a gardener once. I took great offense to that, but today I realized that he was right. This morning while putting out the recycling I was shocked at how bad my yard looks -- my gardens are overrun with weeds and the grass is long in some spots, non existent in others and then the weeds in the middle are brown and crunchy! Yikes, this is so not OK.

So, I skipped my walk, I skipped my blog, I skipped my email. And I thought to myself, how would fly lady crisis clean a back yard? Well the whole yard was shady at that moment so I decided to start where the sun would hit first. I grabbed my bucket, filled it my tools, and went to work. I worked in 6 foot sections: weeding, cleaning, and creating a new tidy edge of grass. Once I finished a section I swept off the brick boarder so it all looked much better. I continued until I was driven inside by two hungry kids that needed some breakfast.

Later that morning Maddie and I cleaned out the mulched play area and the sand box. That makes such a difference -- the area is under a huge Oak tree that drops twigs and leave 365 days a year.

It took about 2 hours to cleanup 1/4 of the yard. That is not too bad! I am off now to mulch the areas that I cleaned out -- that will make all the difference. I was hoping to find a few annuals to plop in and add a little last minute color, but the local garden shop had nothing. I should not be surprised given the time of year and the heat, but I was bummed not to be able to put something new in.

The photos are from our last trip to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden!