I'm semi-retired, so I do the yard work myself. I don't see anything wrong with hiring some help. I am sure that I will have to do so, when I become older.

Lorna

Cheater? No way! I would have no problem hiring someone to come and do the bull work so I can concentrate on other stuff. My yard is too large though and I am sure I could not afford what they would charge.

I think it's a good idea, friend. If your garden gets too far gone, you probably think you can never catch up. With a little one to look after, you can no longer start gardening whenever you feel like it. Baby comes first, always. :)

Libby.............who loves babies.

Please don't put down weed cloth! The only time that I curse is when I'm pulling up that stuff (my DH insisted on it in one part of the garden).

The only time that I like to use it is underneath hardscape like rock in a dry stream bed. I would never put it down where I'll be planting a garden.

If you want help, there's nothing wrong with paying someone to help you out. When my son was born, I gave up sewing my own clothes to free up my time.

Cameron

Cameron and Lorna.. way to make me feel bad!! hahah
Cameron had to give up sewing her own clothes.. and Lorna will only give up doign it herself when she is too old.. ! haha
I am 32 and i have never sewed my own clothes. But I do cook everynight. and I make all my baby's food! he has never eaten a single jar of gerber or anything else. :) and I use cloth diapers.. I guess we all decide where to work the hardest right?

Cameron- the weed cloth is only for walking paths where i want notnign to grow.. so yes.. in a sense-hard scaping. i woudl never use it anywahere else either. I know what you mean!

Msscarlet. i have a pretty big piece fo property- 1 acre. I'm not askgin them to do everything , not on a regular basis. jsut some clean up to help get me started. I did SOOO much myself already but if i want my veggies- i need some help- I let it go the hell last year! :) who knows.. maybe i can't afford it either. we;ll see when they give me the estimate.. I'll let you guys know if my dreams get flushed down the tube. ha

Libby- thanks!! This pic is for your love of babies. :)
Here is my 14month old monster.

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You son is precious, a handsome boy, Friend. Not trying to make you feel bad, just explaining why I have the time at this point in my life but I know that I won't always have the ability! I have a couple of acres. I only deal with about one acre. The rest of it is WILD!

If the landscaping is too pricey, just have them do part of the work. Any help would be good! Once you get it under control, you'll be able to keep it up.

When I moved to this property, it was weed filled. I spent an entire winter weeding and burning. I thought it would never end, but I eventually won the battle. A little bit every day adds up to a big pay-off!

Lorna

AWWWWWWWWW friend. He's adorable. I just want to give him a great big hug.

Libby.............making funny faces for baby.

Lorna- i was just teasin you.. you didnt really make me feel bad. and if i were semi retired too- i'd do it all myuself too- until i got too old.. but working hard keeps ya young anyway right!?? and plus- retirement- less funds to pay pepole with.. haha

mostly i'm jealous that a) you are semi retired. and b) cameron can sew. I liek to think i can do everythign but sew. OK fine- i dont knit either..

:) Thanks for the compliments on the boy. he's a handful- but i love him! :)

My baby is 5 weeks old, and I'm straining to run out to the garden in the 5 minute gaps I can grab while he's sleeping (he wakes up when I put him down). So you can probably imagine what my garden looks like now! I'm too much of a control freak about my garden to hire any help, but that's me :) I do get my husband and kids to help now and then, but only because I can sit by anxiously and say, "careful not to step off the path!" "Don't trim that too low" "watch out for my seedlings!" Anyone I hired would probably quit.

He is just a beautiful "handful". Never skimp on his time....it is gone all too quickly.

He's past this stage, but I used to set up the playpen (wooden then) in a shady spot so I could spend some time in the yard.

Oh...those big blue eyes! What a cutie!

Even though you have an acre to work with be sure to keep an area clear for a play area. Before you know it you'll be looking at swing sets, sandboxes and wading pools. Then he'll be kicking soccer balls, swinging a little plastic bat and learning to throw a football. :-)

Because we have a small lot, I didn't dare have flower beds when my boys were growing up, due to what I just mentioned. But, I wouldn't have changed a thing. The memories are precious.

Spend time with your son and let someone else do the heavy duty, time consuming stuff. I don't think you will regret it!

Marilyn

Lol - my first baby was born in July. That year, I didn't plant a veggie garden. My sister came over to help, and one task I set her to, was to weed the empty veggie garden!!!

If you have an area where it is very obvious which are weeds and which are things to keep, definitely get help!

(I'm now trying to remember if we got the sandbox when ds turned one or two...)

You guys are so sweet :)

Don't worry- our back yard is a huge feild of clover and dandelions and "grass" i fyou can call it that.. haha. there is a volley ball net and a HUGE swingset - the fancy kind, with a built in picnic table and clubhouse on the top.. the works!! This kid has ample playing space. The veggie garden is off to to the side in an otherwise fairly unusable sectoin of yard anyway.. it's all worked out very well. :)

Congrats to you newskye! Kiss that new baby for us all. and for god's sake- let people help. haha :)

Cheater? - heck, no - realist!! There is only so much one person can do, by themselves!!! We all tend to think that we are 'super-woman', that we can do and have it all, that our bodies will heal if we push them past the limits. Boy, am I learning the hard way about that....so let someone else do the grunt work - we can do the creative stuff - hey, and you can snuggle that cute little blond boy. Given the choice, who wouldn't do that!!!!!

Friend, that is one cute kid ya got there! Makes you want to pull him around in a red flyer wagon.

And no, you are most certainly not being a cheater. You've got your hands full. By not hiring help right now you would actually be cheating yourself out of your garden. Like Lorna said, just set your budget and get as much work done as you can from it. What ever's left over, guilt your family and friends into finishing the job. You're a mom now, you gotta learn the fine art of manipulation through guilt LOL.

More pictures!

Steven

Cheating? No way! I am in the same boat with a 13 month old this year. My problem is that I don't trust anyone else not to pull up plants instead of weeds, like my self-sown Columbine and Love in a Mist. Of course you would hope a landscaping company would know better but I wouldn't be too sure. We just hired someone to edge all of our beds and we're putting in the plastic edging. My husband usually does the edging but this year there just isn't enough time. I resisted the plastic edging for a while because I never liked it but our raised beds were losing too much good soil due to erosion so I'm giving in. We found a nice sturdy black edging and you can hardly see it. I love the deep beautiful edging cuts he made yesterday, they look so neat and tidy!

I say enjoy any help you can get! I have a 2 year old crazy toddler who loves to "help" mommy in the garden. I am a single mom, I work full time and I spend as many hours as I can working in my yard.

That said, I will proudly proclaim that I pay a lawn service to mow the grass for me. I do everything else, but I consider that $20 a week money very well spent.

Garden Gal,
too bad you're so far form me- our babies are a month apart. Mine is 14months! :) I knwo what you mean about the weeds- however, the area I will let them weed will be just weeds- beleive me.The landscaper said they are "very good at knowing the difference"- i dont knwo if that's true but i didnt plant any seedlings anyway. it's weed ridden so at this poitn I will let them even kill some things if i have to. a small price to pay to get it back under control.
:) I knwo what you mean about that edging. I have considered it too, but i'm failry certain that NOTHING will save my beds from the bermuda grass invasion. hahaha

Diana, NICE! good for YOU!!!! I proudly proclaim I have folks come clean my house! haha

Steven,.. radio flyer huh..
OHHH- you mean like THIS???

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Friend - your son is just the most precious little guy - give him all the attention you can - they grow up so very fast. That being said I find myself going full circle - I had the years of gardening with 2 young children and had the weeds and neglected gardens - then a couple of years of really pretty gardens - then they both get into competive skating and I was either working to help pay for lessons and taking them to their lesson and competitions so neglected gardens again. Then they left home and I had the most gorgeous gardens possible. My late husband and I just delighted in them. Retired and moved and learned to garden again in a completely different enviroment. Lost my husband to cancer all too soon but found love again and remarried. Now we have my mother living with us and in hospice care so I find myself back dealing with baby things again with her condition. I guess what I am trying to say is that gardens like life evolve over the years but the love of gardening will always remain. Get help if you need it to get you over this stage of your life but don't ever feel guilty - happy gardening and happy looking at them even if someone else keeps them neat - they will always be waiting for you......

Lynne

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.
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An "after" shot:
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