Secret Garden

I have a garden in the back. It's separate from the rest of the yard and I turned it into a garden area when we moved here. Katrina killed it and it spent a couple of years as a dog bathroom/digging spot before I worked on it again. It was my therapy when Mom was sick and after Dad died we hired a landscaper to fix it up after I neglected it the summer he was sick. It was gorgeous! I don't know that I ever took any picture after it was done, though. I have a bunch of "before" pictures, but no "after". You'll have to take my word for it.

I got sick right at the beginning of spring gardening season, and I never did a single thing back there. I think I had Evan cut the grass a couple of times over the summer, but nothing else. I didn't have any energy, and I honestly didn't care. A while back I lamented what it had become. John suggested we spray roundup on the whole thing, maybe first digging up any plants I would like to try to save, then starting over from scratch. I admit I agreed. Again I didn't really care. I was just sick of looking at it.

But then when I got my Kindle I found I could download old classics for free. One of those classics was "The Secret Garden". Have you ever read it? You should. It's really good. If you have read it you will understand why now I don't want to spray Roundup. I want to try to save it myself.

I will probably do the Roundup on the fountain, once I get cleaned up around it. It's full of torpedo grass, and I don't know of any other way to get rid of it. But I will dig up the plants in and around it, first. The rest of the place I will just work on at my own pace. At least the growing season is over so I should be able to keep up with it now.

I finally got started today. The weather was finally cooler and I felt pretty good. I started by taking some "before" pictures.


Bottom right there is a sidewalk going off to the right. See the red thing towards the lower left? That is a ceramic mushroom at the edge of the fountain you can't see. The white plastic thing to the right of that is a solar lantern, also at the edge of the fountain. There is a mimosa tree that isn't supposed to be there (much as I love mimosa trees). The tree on the right side belongs there, but was blown sideways in the tropical storm we had a few weeks ago.

The elephant ears are on the other side of the fountain. They came from my Dad's and I really want to keep them - I don't have to save all of them; they do reproduce pretty well on their own. The pot down on the bottom is on the patio on the edge of the fountain.

Here is what I got done today. I just used the weed whacker on the grass starting on that one side, then raked it up, put it in a trash bag and actually PUT the bag in the trash can. Hooray me! It doesn't look like much but it was a little bit over the line of overdoing it for me. The shower afterward sure felt great, though!

Will I be able to keep it up? We'll see. But I still want to try.