Will it be a garden...or a jungle?

Two years ago this coming October we moved into our current home. One reason that we were attracted to this house was the landscaping. The previous owner was a gardener at heart and had transformed the backyard into a park by planting many different trees, rose bushes and flowers (even a cactus). She had carefully planned the garden so that something new was blooming all summer long. From the tulips and daffodils in the early spring, to the black-eyed susans in late August and lots of other plants in between. But along with this beauty comes work...lots of work...and we were unprepared for the amount of time and energy required to keep our park from looking like a jungle. Last summer, the over zealous plants and weeds were victorious in the back part of the yard, taking over parts of the lawn and walling in the compost so that we could no longer reach it.

I'm not much of a gardener for the sole reason that I don't like bugs. I can handle ants and the odd spider, but worms and other creepy crawlers that cling to the roots of weeds gross me out. Not to mention all the other interesting insects crawling on the dirt...like the lawn grub we found a few days ago. Yuck! Then there are the bees that come in droves when new flowers bloom. I'm convinced the reason they build nests on our deck is to be closer to the abundant availability of nectar in our yard.

A nice thing this year is that my daughter has taken a big interest in the outdoors. She can amuse herself for long periods of time with a bucket of water and her gardening set. A birthday gift from Aunt T last year, it even came with a pair of kid gardening gloves. When she's not watering the weeds, she's killing ants, picking dandelions or raking the dirt. She just loves to help and learn and I've enjoyed showing her new things...like a butterfly on a flower, or the ants working away...even rabbit dropping as it seems that we have a resident bunny.

If again this year I have to surrender to the jungle, I'll just fall back on the advice a landscaper friend of ours gave us..."Whatever you don't want is a weed".