Garden doings

After trying to put things into words for over a week now, I decided to skip an update about the past two months. The good news is that we did get to have a family Christmas, we went to the Zoo with our grandson (and his parents), we visited my father a few times and we were able to be fully present at the wedding of our youngest. Let’s treasure that. The rest… not worth documenting.

I’m planning to write a longer post about my resolutions and/or goals for the new year, but one of the things I really want to focus on is the garden. It’s been doing very well the past few years, mostly since we water it automatically, but it’s a bit (ha!) overgrown. Up to a point where it’s no longer a garden. It’s a jungle.

Before. Just ignore that I already cut off a branch before I remembered to take a picture.

See that Moringa tree on the right? I planted it way too close to the house. But in my defense… a friend of ours had the same trees in his garden and they were tiny. Like only about 2 meters (6.5′) high. Ours are all at least double that height, probably even higher. And since this one is was so close to the house, the top branches hit the roof every time there was a little breeze. And that’s most of the time here. It also blocked a lot of light from our office. I already trimmed it back a few times, but it grows so fast that we decided to cut it down completely this time.

Sad, but necessary.

And then we had to clean up that mess and cut back some other stuff. It took me a while, but hey, look. There’s a path!

Isn’t it funny how patting yourself on the shoulder for results like this (although it’s a far cry from the perfect path I hope to have one day) gives you energy to work on the next thing on the list?

So I worked on this mess next:

Hmn, the photo’s don’t do it justice. But here’s another before and after:

And this one is the most visible improvement:

Far from perfect, I know, but that’s the way I tackle the garden when it’s getting out hand again. First I get the bigger messes done, then I go back for “fine tuning”. Well, that’s the plan anyway. The past four years I never got to finetuning, because there was always a reason for things to get out of hand again. But I have high hopes about this year.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what’s going on with the blue tarp and the partly white gravel… That’s where I got stuck last year with making the paths beautiful and easier to manage. We had a big mountain of gravel delivered in June (you can see it if you scroll up a bit – it’s next to the car) and we were trying to move at least a few loads in the wheelbarrow a day, but fell off the bandwagon when temperatures got abnormally high. I would like to have it all done by the time our daughter, son-in-law and grandson are coming to visit (in March!), so I need to get back to it.

But first there are lots and lots more big messes to tackle. Not to mention the fact that I need to remove that Moringa tree stump. These trees don’t give up so easily.

To be continued…