I am learning to love backyard gardening in New Brunswick. It’s a lot of hard work to get it started so we are starting small this year. I have this inner fear that if we try to do too much in our first year we may get discouraged and give up.

My wife has a good friend that has been gardening for more than 10 years and you can be sure we will be picking her brain for backyard gardening tips and tricks that will make our learning curve a bit shorter.

What we have done so far is to remove some of the bushes that the previous owners let run wild. I spent the better part of yesterday cutting them off at the ground so they are out of our face. We will remove the roots another day but for now our backyard garden area is starting to look a little better.

Backyard gardening is becoming more of a reality every day. These past few days of warm weather, above freezing, is awesome. New Brunswick seems to be a bit behind everyone else when it comes to getting rid of this snow though.

I think this year is going to be more focused on getting rid of the things we don’t want to keep. We have some shrubs that are across the front of our yard and they are way out of control plus it’s not something we care to look at. I would rather have flowers with a shrub here and there but not a big shrubby mess.

We will see if we can find anyone who would like the shrubs and let them have them. All they have to do is dig them up and take them. We don’t even care if they fill in the holes, we can handle that.