It's that time of year. Everything has suddenly decided Winter is done and gone, and it's time to blossom. Which means DH and I go into overdrive.

We have an "easy maintenance" landscape, 2 acres of botanical gardens carefully chosen for low maintenance. After all, we were both working 24/7 when we bought the house, and it had two acres of bad grass, all the way up to the doors!

Gardening in San Diego was easy. Well, maybe that isn't the right word. I always wondered how the apartment and hotels had such perfect gardens, always blooming, until I drove in to work at 6 am and saw the landscaper pulling pots out of the ground of the "old bloomers" and replacing them with identical plants that were fully in bloom. Cheating!

On the East Coast, we had not a clue. But we've dug and pulled and eventually converted most of the land over to gardens. And they are pretty easy to maintenance. Except for twice in the year: Spring and Fall.

Spring means pruning, trimming, whacking, removing, cleanup, fertilizing, and everything in between. Usually we attack this in early March, after the "last frost" (that never is). But this year is OBE. Catchup time. And it's working well!

Spent two days cutting down ornamental grasses, old perennials, lilyturf and St. Johns Wort, raking, piling.

Now, I may stockpile groceries, but DH stockpiles gardening supplies. I made a focused effort to use up all the Holly Tone and Miracle Gro, etc., last year. But we have 75 trees, and every year he purchases more than enough tree fertilizer spikes. Then we never find the time to dig them in. The basement has PILES of evergreen, fruit tree, regular tree stakes...and so many bottles and containers of this and that.

We have the huge pile of mulch he just purchased, spontaneously, then decided we wouldn't have time to do it ourselves. He only purchased 30 yards, and we use about 100. But, we CAN do it ourselves, it's exhausting, and we need to weed and fertilize and all that first. My goal is to get this done, get caught up, and support his idea to mulch ourselves this year. BIG savings. But SO much work.

So for now, time to COLLAPSE.