Rather than work on my project yesterday (bad girl, BAD girl!) I gardened. There have been so many things BUGGING me, so I decided to take care of the things that bugged me the most and then work my way from there.

This wasn't la-dee-da type of gardening either, this was heavy duty pruning (yikes, story to follow), thinning out areas, planting new stuff, etc. Wanna know how long I worked? Sure you do! 6.5 hours.

I'm S.O.R.E. today, but dang, my yard looks good. Well, except one thing.

I have a curly willow tree that I pruned a few weeks ago and I just didn't quite prune it right. It looked lopsided to me and it was bugging the livin' daylights out of me. Even *I* have to admit that I did a bit too much. The bearded eye-roller said that it now looked like Robert De Nero in Taxi Driver (::ahem:: note the mohawk).

Here's a picture of what it looked like last year. The tree is to the right of the frame and has leaves all the way to the bottom:


It all started with a protein shake with sugar-free peppermint. We'll blame it on the protein energy 'high'.


Here's the aftermath. I decided to put some geraniums around the base, so it took away from the bareness of it all. I don't think I have NEARLY enough geraniums to make the pruning less noticeable:


I trimmed the dead stuff off of all the ferns, QUITE the chore, I might add. I weeded everything I could see from our bench (you know, the one we sit at every night), and I thinned out my herb garden. There is nary a weed to be found from where we sit.

When all was said and done, I filled a 32 gallon yard waste bin PLUS filled four yard waste bags.


BER was kind enough to buy me a higher powered trimmer (wow- is he brave, eh?) with a longer blade. Being that he's a guy, he had to be the first to use this power animal. So, I let him go to town on the shrubs. I was OK with letting him do it because then if he saw how much fun it is to cut things down, he might understand my obsession. He filled two more yard waste bags with the stuff he trimmed off.

Believe it or not, I'm not done. I still have the North 40. Let's hope for an overcast yucky day today so I don't get another gardening bug. I have WORK to do.

More pictures can be found in my Flickr account.