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I used to have a garden.

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I used to have a beautiful perennial garden in our back yard. It was a lovely little brick bordered bed and over the years I filled it with a varied assortment of colorful flowers.

There was purple lupine.

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The harder to grow white lupine.

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And some fabulous red bee balm.

A few years in, a little apple tree seeded itself and since I didn’t have the heart to pull it up… it grew happily alongside the phlox, black eyed Susans and Shasta daisies.

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My garden made a wonderful foreground in photos of the big barn construction progress.

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And I had many happy years of bright blooms and vases full of freshly cut flowers.

Until my husband bought the beast.

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The monster zero turn lawn mower that flings grass clippings and weeds what seems like 100 miles. No matter how many times I begged him to reverse direction and steer clear, over the years my bed was overtaken by weeds. No matter how many of the damn things I pulled, dug up or chopped… I couldn’t contain the growth and they slowly started choking out my flowers.

By 2019 I gave up.

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I bought numerous bags of mulch.

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Weed whacked everything down to ground level…

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And covered the whole thing, leaving only the tree. And while I missed my riotous blooms, the aesthetic was pleasing enough to satisfy.

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Of course the husband and his big orange beast kept throwing grass in the bed so I kept getting down on my hands and knees to weed. Until I blew out my knee in the fall of 2020 and could no longer crouch or kneel without considerable pain.

So I gave up again, and now? It looks like this.

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A large brick bordered bed of weeds. It disgusts me on a daily basis but I vowed not to touch it again until a new, taller stone border could be built. And now that the husband is retired with nothing but time on his hands….?

To be continued….

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31 thoughts on “I used to have a garden.”

  4. Magnificent color, but they do take a LOT of care. To combat the weeds/unwanted growth in our botanical backyard, we used 100’s of yards of 15 year weed block and 100’s of cubic feet of pine bark nuggets. . It works to contain about 95% of the bad stuff, making it possible to contain. After 15 years, the foot traffic acts as its own weed deterrent and they just stop trying.

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  6. That is a lot of hard work you put in there. I can feel your loss. I was on my knees this past weekend pulling out weeds in the side garden. Reminded by husband to put weed block and pine bark nuggets, remember as I had to thrown out my cactus and they rooted in the ground. Once rooted, they are hard to budge. I hope he let you know before doing this.

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  8. Wow. That would frustrate the heck out of me too!
    Can he use a leaf catcher on his machine in that area? The flowers with the little apple tree were SO DARN PRETTY!

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  12. I’d be so mad after all of that work! I’m glad you took photos. Now that your husband has time on his hands…perhaps, he could buy himself a new knee pad and get down in the weeds and help pull them? I don’t expect that would happen, but if my husband did that, I’d at least suggest it! Mona

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  13. There’s an exchange that occurs between soil and plants. Weeds aren’t a bad thing, despite being annoying, they do have a life purpose. Saying that, I’ve hopefully accessed a list of plant species native to the Maine area for you to consider – and you might like to explore the soils etc too on the link below. This might improve success rate when planting and also assist in feeding animals who contribute to seed dispersal and pollination that can help native vegetation communities recover. https://plants.sc.egov.usda.gov/home/stateSearch/stateSearchResults?resultId=9381586d-d88b-49cd-8485-cf121da30aa1

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