I love winter. From December 21st – January 1st, it’s my favorite time of the year. But once the holidays are over, I’m ready for warmer weather. For me, the only consolation with cold weather is snow. But this winter we haven’t had much! We had an artic flow that brought lots of snow the week before Christmas, and another light snowfall in January – instead of my winter wonderland, I’ve had to accept cold weather, wind warnings, and lots of rain.
This past week hasn’t been so bad. The temperature has been decent, and the rainy days seem to be dissipating. So with that, I set my sights on our backyard – specifically our back garden. It has been bugging me since last summer, and unfortunately I couldn’t do much because I was heavily pregnant, and then dealing with a newborn. So it sat. Becoming a bigger monstrosity that I despised looking at. Finally, the rain held off, Jaiden went down for a nap at the same time as Nova (which never happens anymore), and the stars aligned. I brought the shovel, rake and garden hoe into the backyard and just started digging…
Weeds were everywhere, grass was sprouting where it shouldn’t, plants were tangled, thorns were hidden, and many plants were dead. With that, I made the decision to dig everything up and figure out what to keep once everything was removed. It was a bigger feat than I had thought. I spent close to two hours digging everything up. The roots were strong, and there were a lot of plants. But once I dug the final bush out, I stood back and admired the work I had done. It no longer looked like an abandoned garden, it looked like a blank canvas with endless possibilities.
Shaun and I love to maintain our yard in the spring and summer. We like to get colorful flowers and adorn our front yard with beautiful plants. But it took us a couple of years to realize what plants to get that would survive our winters and continue to bloom the following spring. The backyard however, was often neglected and has remained that way for the past year or so. But this year I want to make our back garden just as beautiful as our front. I kept the simple, easy maintenance bushes, leveled out the soil, dug new holes, and replanted them (appropriately spaced out, which the builder did not do – most were clumped together), and am happy with the result.
The rest of the plants were dead, and taken to the dump – in three trips which took me an hour and a half while juggling a seven month old and a two and a half year old! Although there are still some things to do (weed some more, buy new soil, and re-seed our grass for spring), I am much happier looking out into our backyard. No longer am I faced with the eyesore that used to inhabit our back fence. Instead, I see a beautiful and simplistic garden that will be easy to maintain, and won’t get to the unfortunate state it was in, ever again.