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I don’t know what got into us today, but the boy firmly said, last night, “Tomorrow is a garden day!” Well, I am one to make great use of any gardening initiative on his part, so around mid-morning we headed out to the front yard to finally get a handle on all the cleanup that needed to be done there.
Part of my son’s desire, of course, was the chance to use the few power tools we have in the garden. In this case, it was the rechargeable line trimmer. He spent most of his morning knocking down the grass that I hadn’t yet been able to dig up completely. It made the paths look much better and should buy me a little more time to remove the grass clumps completely. It also made me less worried that the city would come around and cite use for excessive weeds. I am sure it wasn’t nearly bad enough for that, but I feel much better now. I will eventually dig out all the grass clumps, and pull up the flagstones buried there, but that will take a few more weeks to complete, I think.
While Joe took care of the grass, I took a few limbs off the pine tree. It isn’t that healthy, but several limbs had arched out over the garden and made it difficult to move around. The tree doesn’t need to be removed completely, just yet, but that is in our plans. We have so many trees on this small property that we could spend thousands of dollars a year keeping everything perfect. The last time we had the tree workmen out we had some work done and then had the owner estimate some work to be done soon. The mature elm which takes up much of the front garden is in great need of a trim and will probably be next on the agenda. Then we have a camphor and 2 ash trees that need to be brought back into line and cut back from the neighbors roof. All this requires some smart budgeting though so we don’t break the gardening bank.
We try to make sure that nothing goes to waste here in the garden, though. The limbs we removed from the pine tree were trimmed and became bed edging to replace some old plastic edging and previous limbs that had broken down over the years. When I rolled one of the old limbs I noticed large colony of fungi growing there. What a great way to recycle in the garden.
It was so nice to have us all out in the garden this morning. Together we can have a much greater impact than I can possibly have alone. Seeing so much get done drives me to do even more the next time I am in the garden.
