My hate/hate relationship with my garden

The Monkey and I went for a walk to the shops yesterday, and on the way home I walked past our attrocity of a garden and had to sigh yet again. I absolutely hate it. To be fair it's not the poor garden's fault, I hate it because we have been living here nearly 5 years now and have spent almost no time on it at all, even to weed. The problem is, there are about a gazillion things the HTC and I would rather do than garden, it is absolutely last on both of our to do lists, and our garden definitely reflects that!

We have put some money aside to do it up 'some day' (yes, when 'some day' arrives it is going to be one hell of a busy day, with all the things we have planned for it!!) but there is so much to do even before we start that, and we have both been putting it off forever.

I took some photos which are so depressing it isn't funny. Weeds are already about 30 cms high and it looks disgusting, and due to our several huge gum trees there is bark and leaves absolutely everywhere. We both hate it but it really feels like too big of a job to even start, and even on the rare occassions we do get a little motivated, our green bin fills up in no time at all, and then suddenly there is nowhere to put everything we are cleaning up, so we give up again. It's such a vicious cycle!

So as I was pushing the pram past the jungle yesterday, I stopped for a few minutes and pulled a few weeds out. And while I hate gardening (have I mentioned this already??) I did find that even doing that little bit made me feel a little bit better about it - as long as I didn't look at all the rest that had to be done!

So while it is by no means a small pleasure of mine, I have decided to spend an hour a week chipping away at the jungle that is our front yard (and yes, the back is just as bad, but I have to start somewhere!!), because I think it will become a small pleasure to see our garden very slowly becoming less of a weed pit. And then once that is done, maybe we can have a bit clearer idea of what we want done design wise, because at the moment it is way too much of a big job to even contemplate that stuff.

So here is my effort from 20 minutes yesterday, with Mr Frog keeping a watchful eye on my work. I am a bit annoyed as this photo makes the area look about ten times smaller than it actually is, but there was a lot to do as it was all covered in the 30cm weeds that you can see behind.