The short version: we have lived here for 27 days. We have never owned a home before, either of us. We have very little money. What we had has been spent. The house has a garden. Something must be done with it. Thus here we are.

Actually, the house has two gardens  — such as they are. They are both more or less hellholes. I think this is only a moderate exaggeration. Some may call it an understatement. And yet, they are our hellholes now. (Well, Freddie Mac’s, technically, but unless someone there wants to pick up a hoe I think we’re still on our own.) So I, a stay-at-home mom, consummate underachiever, and highly unlikely horticultural candidate, am going to do something about it. I am not going to hire someone to do it for me, not because I wouldn’t like to — I would like to very much — but because we can’t. So I am here to show how a non-gardener from Brooklyn married to another non-gardener from Detroit turned her household hellholes into drought-resistant, lush, verdant oases for the enjoyment and leisure of her child, her husband, her friends…

Sigh.

Failing that, I at least hope to show how a human herbicide (my husband’s words — thanks, honey) can become something, well, less fatal to the plants around her.  Wanna watch?