Gardening Dummies

We have 2 acres of property at our new home. One of our priciest purchases thusfar is this mega riding mower that Marc has to pull out weekly to keep our lawn under control. We've never had much "lawn and garden" experience so our learning curve has been a bit steep. Poor Marc has wacked his head trying to mow around the Evergreens (no permanent damage, but scratch on the head that lead to more blood than one would think necessary), slipped around in the ditches, mowed down the dogwood trees we planted, and most recently broke the blade on the mower (we've had it less than 2 months;). We've struggled to somehow keep on top of things, but fear we are certainly "those" neighbors with the unkempt lawn. We have more dandelions than one could possible imagine- even after paying through the nose for a landscaping company to come and spray. In the process we learned that it sometimes takes 6 applications to "take care" of the problem....meanwhile everyone around us has golf course lookin' grass. Our other "issue" is the "flower beds"; we have two that were obviously well landscaped at one time. The problem is we had NO idea what was in them until things started to pop up. We've had so much rain, however, that nothing just popped up. Before we knew it everything has begun to run into each other and it is a mess. Was it in pristine condition last year? Or has it been neglected for a while? We don't even know what everything is! (To be honest, we hardly know what ANYTHING IS;)

Today we began to tackle the problem. One thing we DO know for sure- neither of us really enjoys this whole gardening thing. Poor Marc has the majority of the work to do; I am doing what I can but I am 38 weeks pregnant with ankles the size of an elephant. I feel like crap and therefore am pretty useless- though I did my best to help out. I have a little gardening book and after reading NOW know we were suppose to trim back stuff as soon as it made an appearance...or in the fall (which we can't help since we didn't even conceive living here;). We are digging and pulling weeds and trimming back stuff galore and we didn't even finish one of the beds today. Sure- we did make a little progress and I am HAPPY that we have found two gorgeous peonies amongst the mess- but one does have to wonder when and if we'll finish. We have to- we do, but it is a task and a half and next year I am thinking we pay a landscaper to dig it all up and put in sod. Or just pay a landscaping service to take over....

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to look out and see our huge lawn and the nature that surrounds us, but boy OH boy are we learning how much work it takes to maintain or gain that beauty. We now know both of us hate this work...not sure what we can do about that, but next summer I won't have the pregnancy excuse, so I have a feeling we'll be doing a whole lot of rock, paper, scissoring to see whose turn it is to weed and mow....or maybe we'll just compromise some convictions and play the lottery- hoping to win enough to hire a gardner. Either way- we need the three day weekend to finish this "project" and then are just keeping our fingers cross that we don't mess up anything to badly. Thank goodness Marc's step dad will be here after the baby and can help direct us further. We're pretty pitiful....