I guess I’m working my way from easiest to hardest/worst mess.

The beds in front of the house are managed. Off the patio is in good shape. It could use more mulch. But, it’s not bad and can wait a while.

A spice bush is planted in the empty (no longer weedy) spot in front of the shed. That also needs mulch. I can do that with a bucket or 2.

The zinnia patch around the well is done. It has been mulched.

I think of the roadside bed in 3 sections. The shady part is (now) between the silver bark maple and a persimmon (male, no fruit.). It has a dogwood that I transplanted from a friend’s yard, a ‘Rising Sun’ redbud, the rice paper bush, a camellia, some Eastern columbine, some straggly mums, calla lilies, irises and the hellebore patch. The middle is partial shade and goes north from the persimmon and includes the peonies, 2 black leaved crepe myrtles, 3 fancy spiderworts, 3 azaleas, more irises, trout lilies and spotted bellflowers. The sunny part has ruella (devoured by deer this year), crocosmia, solar flares, monarda, a Japanese quince, more irises and the big leaf magnolia.

Today, I worked on the shady section. I have cleared out Virginia creeper, boxwood, pin oak, maples, cedars, and dogwoods. Most of them weren’t knee high, some were just a couple of inches tall. A boxwood growing up through the dogwood was more significant. Some, I pulled up. (Cedars are surprisingly easy.) Some, I cut as close to the ground as I could get and poisoned with Triclopyr.

While I was doing that, Chuck cleared up the southern fence. There are 4 crepe myrtles there that I planted 21 years ago. Also, some blueberry bushes. The crepe myrtles have been putting out shoots and crowding the blueberries. Not any more, baby! It’s shockingly tidy over there, now.

Left foreground is some deadwood waiting to be cut up for our fire pit. Behind that is a small green shed with a forsythia bush on the left and a ballshaped compost bin to the right. There’s a Chinese silk tree immediately behind the shed. Along the fence are 4 crepe myrtles with small blueberry bushes in between them. Between the last crepe myrtle to the right and a Bradford pear on the other side of the fence is a small patch of lily greenery. There’s a small butterfly bush in the corner. The green in the foreground on the right is a fig.

Behind my fence are 2 sheds in my neighbor’s yard, a cart with junk on it, the deck behind her house, the white van that has been parked there for as long as I’ve lived here with part of a wooden pallet leaning against it.

If you can zoom in that far, you can see the propane tank belonging to the neighbors on the other side of her.