Gardening Progress: The carcasses have been dragged to the tree lawn.

First, I decided to tackle the weeds in the driveway.  I spent hours and hours weeding the driveway on Saturday.  This is the worst of it.  I dug and picked.  I got probably 99% of the weeds.  Works for me.  

See?  Nice! 

Weedy!

Better!

Death and destruction.  We have come to the conclusion that this butterfly bush was no longer alive.  So sad. 

I tried to trim some away myself.  This is how far I got.  I also have a thorn in my paw.  I forgot to have Hubs dig it out.  :(

The milkweed took over the grill area.  The wild black berries took over, too.

Because we believe in keeping it real, I will show you that it got a bit weedy.  We were kind of letting the two back beds go a bit because I didn't want to jostle anything that may be coming back.  We're about 3 weeks behind in the growing cycle.  We had poke weed coming up.  Hubs made that go away. I left it because I was thinking that it is purposeful.  Nope.  Gone. 

Digging out the carcass was harder work than he thought. 

It took Hubs well over an hour.  His back is killing him.  So is mine, but I think it's from weeding. 

Gone are all of the funky reminders of death. 

The wreckage. 

Another weedy bed. 

Planting the new butterfly bush.  We just couldn't leave that space this year.  We have planted it, watered and mulched it.  I even fed the heck out of it.  Though I normally don't feed, I have to this year.  It was a horrible winter resulting in just awful loss. 

Look at how beautiful it is compared to the gacky death that was there just hours before.

Hubs edged and mulched.  We still had some mulch from last year.  It was good enough for a skim coat.  Fine with me. 

Inspecting his work.

Lookie loo!  So nice! 

And down here, too!  For those interested, we kept with the invasive run of wild blackberries and milkweed.  Butteflies are nectaring at the milkweed and we don't want to pull what could be baby monarch caterpillars.  The milkweed only lasts a few weeks.  We'll let it run its course and we'll pull what is in the grill area.  We'll leave the rest be.  That way, we'll be able to have s'mores at some point this summer. 

The side back bed.  Much better now. 

The tree lawn pile of wreckage.  K helped me haul it. 

The front.  Much nicer than what we used to have going on. 

Bee balm.  Fun stuff!

Perennial geranium.

Butterfly weed. 

Crown vetch, though it was pulled right after this photo.  A bit invasive.  Pretty, though.

White yarrow from Cj's farm.

Potentilla.

Clematis. 

Yellow day lilies.

Milkweed.

Goosenecks, though I just found out today that they are a variety of Loosestrife. 

Baby tomatoes!

The pink yarrow up front. 

White coneflower. 

Cosmos.  Reseeded from last year. 

Purple coneflower. 

Lavender.

Lime green nicotiana that I originally planted in 2007.  I haven't planted it since. 

A new plant.  

My morning glories!  

A day lily volunteer.  Didn't plant it, I promise.

I didn't plant this one, either. 

The top of the rain barrel. 

My guard system for the corn.  The rabbits keep eating it. 

Beans and many lovely flowers! 

This wind is nice.  I wonder what that is over there?

Such a nice breeze to sniff.

\

Mom, you really have to put that thing away.

A butterfly!  A Great Spangled Fritillary.  It made our hearts happy to see that. 

The reason we didn't remove the extraneous milkweed. 

Look! 

A Stag Beetle! 

Ewwww.  And a larval Stag Beetle.  

And a dragonfly.  

A lot of gardening was done this weekend.  Here's to hoping we'll get a lot of butterflies as a result!