Motivational Garden Trike

My sweet mother-in-law gave me this tricycle planter for my birthday a few weeks ago with the ivy plant. It was the final motivation that I needed to get my severely neglected garden back into shape. 

I have several projects on my "Do Before Daisy Arrives" list, and this was one of them. I knew I couldn't handle it by myself, so I bribed my sister with free lunch to come help me. She likes all things plants, so she probably would have helped sans bribe. 

Before: 

It's a jungle of weeds. The legitimate plants are harder to find than Waldo. 

Lydia and I started weeding around 9:30 a.m., and the weather was really pleasant for us. By 11:00 a.m., we managed to clear out all the unwanted plants and trim back the overgrown ones:

Looking much sparser.

Only two kitchen bags of weeds and a lonely mini-tree trunk for the garbage men. 

Next, we took a trip to the super center to pick up some pretty flowers (ten plants to be exact) and eight bags of mulch. Total cost was $43.00. I didn't think that was too bad.

After a short lunch break, we were back at it around 1:00 p.m., planting the new plants. By this point the Florida sun was high and hot. I was SO glad we did the weeding in the cool morning. We had to take more water/AC breaks after lunch.

New plants in the ground and mulch ready for spreading. 

It took us about an hour to plant the new plants and 30 minutes to spread the mulch. Not counting the trip to the store and our lunch break, the whole garden was overhauled in three hours. Not bad!

Final product! 

I was so excited when I looked at the before and after photos. When we finished, I had already forgotten what a mess it was before. It looks so clean now!

Let's take another look at the before and after shots: 

Before!

After!

  I'm not a fan of manual labor, but I love to see the the final product. Plus, I got spend the day hanging out with my sister, which makes work WAY more fun.