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A Gardener's Notebook: The latest incarnation of my column detailing the trails and tribulations of my garden. Join the list and ask your own questions about gardening Subscribe

There is nothing like a good deadline to get your garden work rolling and nothing says "deadline" like hosting a baby shower....in your garden....in a month! I got rolling this Friday, but still don’t know if I will be ready when the mid-August date rolls around.

Barney says, "Cleanup, cleanup!"

Joseph, my 2-year-old is very familiar with Barney and we even sing the "clean-up" song as we pick up toys. He got another introduction into cleanup this week, though, in the garden. Blasting the hibiscus with the hose has become a daily ritual as the white fly infestation continues on. They have moved to another plant, as well. They cover the leaves in a white cotton-like mass, so to help cut down on the spread I have trimmed some of the heavily infested areas and thrown them out. I suppose they will eventually run through their life cycle, but I hope it happens sometime before Winter arrives.

Next in the cleanup process were the closely planted pine trees that line one small path in my garden. There were originally 8 of these trees, but they quickly started to crowd each other out. Several of the trees had succumbed before we bought the property and I had removed one in an earlier garden cleanup session. This time I took the smallest and moist sickly of the remaining 5 and removed it entirely. I then removed all the dead limbs that were clustered around the bottom of each of the trees. The spare trunks create a sense of depth when you look across the garden and cleaning up the dead limbs keeps people from asking "what’s wrong with your pine trees?" The long straight trunk of tree I removed will get a new life as edging for one of the garden beds. We have slowly replaced all the plastic edging in the garden with more natural treatments and this will move that project along.

Miles to go...

Even with this small beginning there are many things I need to address. I haven’t removed leaves from the entire garden in many, many months. I have raked or swept a few areas, but I have not used the leaf blower to cleanup everything. This will take a few hours but I am always amazed at how much better everything looks when I am done.

I am also thinking of mulching a lot of the flower beds, but the cost of redwood bark and other mulches seems prohibitive for the large beds I have. Since all the bulbs have finished up for the season there are large bare areas in the flower beds. I had hoped to neaten them up a bit but I may have to get more creative. Maybe I can use some of the leaves that I sweep up to create a basic mulch. It certainly would be cheaper.

Along with these typical garden tasks I am thinking of adding some sort of paving under the wisteria trellis, repairing the trellis itself and planting a host of new plants. I found some Impatiens that have a more upright posture and would look nice behind our low stone wall. Finally, there is the large issue of what do with all the pathways in the garden. The pea gravel needs refreshing as there are bare areas appearing here and there. Joseph has been speeding up that process with his toys.

While I have seen everything from simple chipped trees to shredded redwood bark to decomposed granite, I have haven’t been able to make up my mind . I guess I will have to decide soon or I might have to put up "Road Closed" signs during the baby shower.

I will keep you informed on my progress, as always. If you have any recommendations for mulches or paving, send an email to the AGN Mailing List and help out your fellow readers -- and me, of course!.