Thank you, Melanie.
My yard looks a lot like yours, and yes, I have lots and lots of butterflies, too. We have no lawn to speak of, although we are on the corner and my wonderful neighbor mows the verges between our fence and the street, in exchange for free well water - a nice win-win if ever there was one.
Happily, we live in a non-deed-restricted community so nobody complains about other peoples' yards. When my husband comments on the "jungle" I just point out that I do keep the pathways clear in the summer, and sometimes even that is a big job. Especially in the heat.
Then I remind him that in summer the plants speed up while the gardener slows down. Once the weather starts cooling, it cycles back until in the cool weather the gardener can actually get ahead of the plants!
Or the lazy old gardener can hire a young person with lots of energy . . . which is what I did last week. We did three, two-hour sessions (well, she did 2hr. and I rested a bit here and there) and tomorrow the poor trash guys will be unloading 5 trash cans full of weeds and prunings. Things are looking fairly civilized out my window today. But that's only about 1/4 of our garden area, so there's lots more to do. I'll post some landscape pics tomorrow if I have time. School garden in the morning then a seminar on Growing Edibles at the Extension office in the afternoon.
