small goals

I am feeling some dismay about the state of my yard and garden. Last summer the front bed looked like this- all full!

Now it's pretty shabby. The deer have eaten back a lot of the shrub on the corner, and I think some of the mums died. I did not go out on the spur of the moment to quickly cover plants from cold this past fall and winter- didn't even really mulch most of the plants. So I expect not everything survived. I suppose the plus is that it shows me what work I was doing needlessly! I need to get out there and clean stuff up, but can still only do a little bit at a time.

One of the few things I did accomplish last fall was digging up some errant ajuga and moving them to form an outside ring surrounding the crabapple base in front yard. Also trimmed back the yellow salvias, which looked like they might start spreading into the lawn. I dug up and moved some autum joy sedums around, and also tore out tons of vinca from the sideyard where the steps are, transplanted milkweed to the other sideyard, and dug and moved joe pye weed into its place against the house on that slope. Because the milkweed never seemed to do great on the first sideyard, but a few were thriving in the other spot. And I wanted to move most of the joe pye from where we planned to put a gate in, thought it would look nice tall against the house there. 

Now it just looks strange and empty where I dug and moved plants, because the fence has not yet got installed. And the deer come up into that space now, are eating the other euonymus shrub plus the small ones I planted in the back, plus what's in the garden . . . 

However the ajuga on first sideyard is filling in between the stepping stones

and other things are still showing their greenery for spring. Yesterday I cleared half another garden bed of weeds, pulled out dead stems above the freshly sprouting catmint, and gathered up piles of sycamore leaves that had blown into the yard, stuck under shrubs all winter. It was enough to get me winded and swell my ankle again.

I think this year I have to just plan on trying to keep the yard tidy and take care of the perennials, that's probably it. They will get a good feed this season as I didn't turn over and spread the compost last season, just gave them some leaf mulch if I recall.