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After my dental appointment yesterday afternoon, I came home, enjoyed a bowl of the wonderful lamb stew I'd made on Sunday, then put on my grubby clothes and went outside to do a bit of gardening with my mom. The grass needed to be cut, and there were some seriously overgrown bushes I've been wanting to cut back for some time now, but have kept putting off. That's not good. We've had rain. We've had sunshine and warm weather. The bushes were starting to blossom. I cut them back anyway. If they die off, we'll just put something else there. Something that doesn't take so much care and water. Like a succulent. Or a decorative rock.

Anyway, I got the grass cut first, then went on to dealing with the overgrown plants and bushes. The main bush I wanted to take care of was the overgrown euryops (large bush with yellow daisy-like flowers) that is right in front of our pretty pink-blossomed tree (I want to say it's a Japanese maple tree, but I'm not really sure.)

The problem with that bush is that I've never cut it back all the way, so it's pretty much all long, gangly branches, new green growth and some buds. Still. I chopped it back anyway. It doesn't look very good right now, but at least you can see the pretty tree now. This fall I will definitely cut that bush all the way back, and maybe it won't get so out of control!

I'd forgotten how satisfying and fun gardening can be. I used to hate having to spend my weekends out in the yard cutting stuff back, mowing, edging, and trimming. Yesterday, however, it felt really good. I really enjoyed it. Perhaps I'm becoming a gardener after all.