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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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