Congrats on growing beautiful children! Don't feel guilty about allocating some $$ of the budget to keep your home happy and functioning. When I had my son the Csection went badly and I couldn't function in the yard for almost a year. The only plus side was that house was on a in-town lot and a half with sand-based soil. It wasn't so horrible to get going again as the soil was so loose and the property was small. But, it did break my heart to look out and see weeds, weeds, weeds. When we moved to our current property it was is sorry shape. Nothing had been done with the 2-acre property other than cut the open lawn areas for at least a 4 year period! (When I say "cut the open areas" I mean the cutting a riding mower can do around trees, ditches, etc). The original owner had circled the house with plantings of green hosta, forsythia, and purple iris, with double white peonies alongside the steps. The forsythia had overgrown the windows of the house, the gutter had come off the high end of the house and allowed erosion along the steps (there were no peonies to see at the time...only a waist-deep gully), and knee high grass was present from the landscape timber edger across the 3' "bed" to the house. An orchard of over 20 fruit trees that had not been pruned, maintained (or even mowed) for 4 years. No sidewalks. Just a vast green weed expanse of 2 acres with an orchard of fruit "bushes" inside a meadow and a house with basically no windows as the forsythia covered them. I hired a guy to pull out all of the forsythia, repair the deck, put in a gravel sidewalk, spray-kill the grass in my intended new flower bed, and bring in two tandem truck loads of mulch. I put my efforts into terrace gardening along the steps to get rid of the gully and reclaiming the hostas, irises, and fruit trees. Imagine my surprise when beautiful, fragrant peonies came up in my new terraced rock garden. Apparently peony roots will withstand a lot of abuse as there didn't seem to be anything but brick-solid eroded gully there before! The point of this long story: if its a big project you have to budget between your time, your priorities, and your $$$. We are ALL doing that on a regular basis. Who are we trying to impress??? OURSELVES!!! Feel good at the end of the day! Have time for your babies! Create a beautiful and peaceful haven for your family. Some people can put more of their own time and muscle behind it; others will need to put more of their $$ into a project because its beyond their physical abilities. Its all good if you can enjoy the results at the end of the day...and don't forget to sit down in that nice yard with your loved ones and ENJOY IT (there's where I miss a priority from time to time). A "before" shot, sort of, I had trimmed the forsythia off the windows, put the gutter up, and shoveled the gully wash out dirt off the driveway. An "after" shot:

Yeah, remember '94 or whenever it was.....there was actually a day here in Appleton that the high temp was something like 20 below zero! That's Farenheit for you limeys and Europeans. Was talking to a nice young couple from Germany a couple weeks ago when I was down in SW Florida. When asked if we here in WI get "below zero", I knew he meant below the freezing point of water, lol! Straightened out that point of understanding. This indeed could be the year of weeding out some questionable plants, my present observations of these C. lawsoniana not withstanding. Up in that same location I have a few Green Giants which, to date, have been utterly fit for life there. Also, a couple dawn redwoods. I'd not be surprised to see any of these plants succumb. Oh well, was never a high-percentage gamble. Then again, who knows? +oM

I'm just finishing up my 3rd day of the chemo regimen. As we are treating this out of town, I'll be glad to get home. I'm a bit fatigued today, but other than that still doing fine. Again, thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers. It means so much to me.

I solved this problem by putting a pair of metal heron statues in the water of the pond. The real herons think that my pond is already "owned" by those two fake ones, so they fly on to find another spot. (One year I removed the fake ones early, and soon it was occupied by real ones -- eating my Koi fish!)