Snail! No, Gabe, it's a worm.

The family across the street had a party last week, and I ended up talking with a neighbor who's garden I greatly admire.  Incredibly, she offered to come over the next morning and help me make some sense of our overgrown front yard.  Her rules?  She'll give advice, and help prune and pull stuff out, but she won't clean up.  Sounds fair to me!

She spent several hours working with me, and taught me that what I thought was honeysuckle sweetly entwined with our butterfly bush was actually a noxious choke-weed slowly suffocating one of my favorite plants.  Oops!  She also encouraged me to go ahead and pull some hostas that I just wasn't fond of.  No offense to hostas in general, but they often leave me with an "overly manicured industrial park" kind of feeling.  Plus these particular hostas just weren't doing well in this location.  I had often thought of pulling them, but couldn't quite pull the trigger.  Now, though?  Those hostas are gone.  And replaced with some black-eyed susans, pink cone flowers, and something else I can't pronounce.  I've still got a long way to go making the garden my own, but we're off to a start.