Gardening Therapy

I took yesterday as a vacation day and headed to my mom's to work in her yard.

 

 I didn't get "before" pictures of these areas, but they were pretty bad. We weeded, put down a thin layer of newspaper to act as a weed suppressant, and then spread mulch.

 

This picture shows what a bed at the corner of the house looked like before. See that tiny speck near the right side toward the back? That's a rose.

Specifically, it's this rose that you see here. That shows how much needed to come out of that bed. There were thistles four and five feet high. Luckly, we've had enough rain that the soil is fairly loose. I wouldn't have been able to get as much done as I did if the soil hadn't already been wet. As it was, there were lots of weeds that needed dug out. I didn't have the energy to get the newspaper and mulch down in this bed, but it's ready for it.

There's a garden center near where I live. Earlier in the spring, their sign read, "Gardening is cheaper than therapy, and you get tomatoes." It was really good for me to work on something that had clear progress and was physically demanding enough that my whole self was busy with what I was doing.

I'm thinking about taking another day off to go back out and work. It is cheaper than therapy, and Mom gets a prettier yard.