Tree Killer

Ok, yes - I admit that is me....I'm a tree killer. But seriously they need to stay out of my damn yard!!

So here's the background:

We bought our house 2 years ago and this will be our 3rd summer year. The first year I did very little gardening - and I mean a very little! The flowerbeds were still pretty much overgrown and had roots growing everywhere and this horrible lopsided tree/bush thing. (And yes, I killed that one too!)

So on to our 2nd summer here - I was pregnant - and of course got that wild hair up my ass to do something about the garden beds. So cleaned out all the weeds, had hubby digging out roots and I dug up, split and re-planted hastas, I bought garden accessories (a few stepping stones, a wind chime, etc) and bought a couple flowers and I was fairly happy with it. At least with the one side of my house. The other side would have to wait - because come one I was already 8 months pregnant!!!

So the summer passes and we're into fall. Boy 2 had been born and most of my time was occupied with the new baby. So along came my wonderful husband who noticed that I had some weeds in my garden. He proceeded to spray them with weedkiller - along with everything else in my garden too!!! So my nice hastas that I spent hours (and I mean hours) spliting and re-planting - all of them had huge holes and were wilting more and more everyday!

However, I still made another attempt to make it look nice and planted a few fall flowers. However, I'm not a real good flower picker because I picked the single most evasive plant there was! I don't know what its called but it has small yellow/greenish leaves on it and I thought it flowered but mine never did - it just kept growing, and growing and growing til it took over my entire flowerbed. So by this time I had dead hastas and this horrible creepy crawling plant everywhere!!

Towards the end of the season I decided that I was going to get rid of the hastas - I again spent hours ripping them out of the ground and figured I would plant something better the next year. And that awfull creepy crawly thing was brown and dried up so I just left it there figuring I would clean it out before I planted new flowers in the spring. I also during this time tilled the ground on the other side of the house and got rid of all the weeds over there and laid down those weed stopper things and than covered it with mulch so it would be ready for Spring.

So spring time finally rolls around and I'm all excited about planting new flowers and making the front of the house look nice. Over the winter we had gotten new siding put up and a new roof - so I wanted to make the house look good this year.

However, much to my surprise those damn hastas came back again!! I couldn't believe it - I tried to kill a plant and I couldn't do it. (If you know anything about me - you'll know that I have a black thumb and kill just about everything I touch!!) Before I knew it they were everywhere - however, this time they looked great. They were all properly spaced out and I decided I liked them and they could stay. That stupid creepy crawly thing came back too and with a vengeance!! It took me hours to pull up all the roots from every single branch of that thing! But when that was finally done, I planted several other perennials this year (I didn't do that before - because I'd rather do it over and over and over again every year!!!) and I was happy.

It's nothing spectacular - but I wanted to start small since I have that horrible black thumb!

It looked great for a while until my husband came around and decided that the grass had too many bald spots and he needed to plant grass seed. God forbid he actually take caution in what he was doing!! Next thing I know there is grass growing on both sides of my garden. I took all that work to get all the grass and weeds out and lay down that damn weed stopper and now I have grass on top of it!! I was ready to kill him!! And still to this day, think about it while I'm out there picking strands of grass out by hand!! And I've ordered, ok maybe that's a strong word, I strongly suggested to him that he not try to help me out by spraying weed/grass killer again this year because than he may really be dead!

And than came this tree - I like to call Lucifer.

Well it didn't just come - it's been there for quite a few years!

Anyway, this is one of those trees from hell that have the fucking helicopter thingy's on them - and while this tree is in my neighbor's yard - all those stupid fucking things come into my yard and my garden!! Literally thousands of them!! And while one weekend I went out and picked every single one of them out of my garden - the very next day there seemed to be twice as many! So what could I do but leave them there. It's not like I have hours upon hours every day to go out there and pick them out.

Eventually all of those damn things turned into teeny tiny maple trees. And for the past couple weeks, I've been out there pulling them out - practically every freakin' day! And when you think you've gotten them all - you look 2 days later and there are huge ones that look like they've been growing for weeks.

It's never ending and of course part of me just wants to let it go and let them have their way with my garden....but I don't want it to be a failure AGAIN!! Just once I want to be able to say that I planted a garden that made it through an entire season and maybe even into the next one!!

By this time I think I've killed over 500 of those damn trees - so I admit - I'm a tree killer. But they deserved it!!!

So I guess for now, I'll be out there pulling them out every day - that is unless anyone else has any ideas on how to get rid of them!