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They say that necessity is the mother of invention. It is also the mother of motivation at my house, currently. Several projects I’ve been putting off are now somewhat urgent. One of them is tending to my upper garden, which sits at the top a small hill behind my house.

At one time the space held a mix of vegetable gardens and perennials. There were peonies, lilacs, irises, rhubarb and even a small mistletoe plant. The previous owners had let the garden go to seed a few years before I took it over in 2013. Ever since I’ve just been trying to keep the area from being entirely consumed by bittersweet (aka my mortal enemy) and a mysterious groundcover.

For the first 5-6 years I lived here I vowed I would clean up the upper garden and do some serious landscaping to make it more accessible and enjoyable. But there never seemed be enough time. Weekends and evenings were spent at school events, sporting events or shuttling my kids hither and thither. And so I eventually gave up the ghost of a lovely little garden tucked away on the hill. Instead I focused on easier-to-maintain areas around my house.

This year though, I’m finally going to do some proper landscaping and get the space ready for planting. But before I can start adding in more flowers and vegetables, I have to prune, pull and remove all the excessive vines, weeds and trees. I likely won’t even begin planting anything new until next year. I started working on cutting back the garden this past weekend. As I was hacking away at giant bittersweet vines, I was kicking myself for not doing this years ago. Why had I let it get so wild? Why hadn’t I been more diligent about the upkeep? Cutting away all the overgrowth felt like I was giving someone a very short and very bad haircut. It was one of those it’s-going-to-get-worse-before-it-gets-better situations.

Even though I love the wild and unkept beauty of this space, I risk losing it all together if I don’t take serious action now. So while it pains me to cut everything down to the dirt and have to cut down several trees (which are leaning precipitously close to my house) I know that the end result will be a much healthier, and even more beautiful, corner of the world. Moving forward I want to start using a Garden Journal & Planner, similar to this one.

When I first started working on this space it was overwhelming and I wanted to quit right away. So in my head I marked off a small area to focus on. I just had to clear this one area, and I could be done for the day. That one area took me four hours to clean up, but I was so happy at the end of it. And much more motivated to continue the work. It was a good reminder that small actions can have big impact.

Do you have any lessons you’ve learned from your gardens or nature?