Virginia Sole-Smith
Weed-free hydrangea bush, getting ready to bloom!
Big news: I've taken the gardening outside.
If you've been following along with Lesson 1 and Lesson 2, you'll know that I started flexing my green thumbs indoors, because plants in a box seemed a lot less threatening than plants out in the big wide world. (Not such a great message from an environmentalist, I know -- but I swear it's really about me wanting to minimize my eco footprint as much as possible, because I'm terrified I'll start wreaking major havoc on living things any minute now!)
Well, last weekend, buzzing on too many Cadbury Mini Eggs and much encouragement from my mother (a master gardener; and, by the way, do you like that all my gardening exploits require some form of peer pressure combined with a tasty treat?) I tackled the first two flower beds in our yard.
A little relevant back story: Our house was built in 1870, which presumably means people have been tending to the outdoor space around it in one form or another since then. But from what we can tell, the most recent prior owners didn't do a darn thing during their time here. So every bed in my garden looks like this:
Swallowed by dead leaves, overrun with grass and weeds, and whatever plants are managing to grow their way through the mess are in desperate need of attention. You can see why my first instinct was to keep all gardening efforts limited to the indoors.
But after three hours of furious raking, pulling, pruning, and clearing, I achieved this:
