In the garden...before

Last year I didn't touch my garden. Didn't pull one weed, didn't trim any spent blossoms, didn't dig out any volunteer trees or hollyhocks or phlox. I was busy. I spent nearly 6 weeks in Europe. And in between, I played and wrote and played and wrote and played and wrote some more.

This year, I'm paying the price...

Thistles in the tulips.

Maple trees in the echinacea.

Hollyhocks choking out the fern peonies.

Mystery trees in the verbena.

And thistles, thistles everywhere.

It's a bigger job than I can handle myself. So I've hired a friend of mine to come over a few nights a week and help me trim, pull, dig, cut and prune. Two nights in, and there's been lots of progress. There was even enough space cleared out to plant tomatoes. I can actually see the raspberry plants now that masses of weeds have been pulled. We've taken two huge truckloads of brush and cuttings to the compost center.

I've forgotten how sore and tired gardening makes me. I've been running and lifting weights every nice evening for more than a month, but one night of working in the garden flattened me. What a wimp. That's what I get for taking a year off.

Stay tuned for the "after" photos.