Just take a breath, take a day or week off, and enjoy what you have. Glass of wine, a good book, or whatever. Maintain what you have after that and add only one or two things. I am having to scale back what I want to do. I just don't have time. You think after you retire (I did), that you will have more time. NOT! I am playing catch up now and it is so much harder than when I was 20 or 30. I find that I am enjoying it more since I just started saying to myself: "What plant do I want the most?" or "What would make the most improvement?" or even "Hey, I just want to read today!" I try to do some little something outside everyday, even if I just water or groom a plant. I can't work from dawn to dusk with a fifteen minute break now and then anymore. I splurged on some pansies from a good garden center the other day and they were fantastic. Much better than the big box ones. You have been through all the stress of the hurricane and even if it didn't do much damage (did it?), that was still a lot.

No no, don't let everything die back! Anyway, if you're not in a desert they won't die, they'll just wrestle, and the strongest will take over. But many plants do fine with a heavy pruning, and then maybe you'll feel it looks a little more manageable...

I completely understand how you feel. 20 years ago when I moved into my house I was thrilled that I would have tons of room to plant... and I did.. Now it's overwhelming with the work required to keep it. I'm starting to plant mostly only natives and not many at that. I simply can't work in the yard like I used to and that is no fun. Take a break from it and go back later and start slowly..

Sherry, I truly understand. Wine sounds good right now -- lots of wine. LOL Hermine did more damage than Matthew, but that's not it. It's that nothing really turned out like I thought it would this year, so I'm ready to redo the whole thing.

bellagirl, my 1/4 acre yard at my old house was going to hell in a handbasket before I left because I simply could not do all that work again. I love my little 300sf of space here, but my apartment manager has given me permission to plant other spots, and I'm not sure I want to now. I'm all for actually scaling back a little.

There are things I absolutely love and won't give up, like my brugmansias, but there are some things I could definitely do without, like the huge hibiscus bushes outside the courtyard, and probably even the bananas.

See, you are already doing what I finally started. What do I like best or what looks absolutely the worst and I need to clean or fix. I think that I am really getting more done this way, but I'm not as tired or frustrated. I like to sit and view the results also. I just try to face away from what doesn't look good. LOL We are supposed to have our first hard frost this weekend, so I need to finish getting stuff in today.

Maybe you need a small scale project like a fairy garden to bring things down a notch and take a break from the bigger stuff.

@ut2nc oooh! a fairy garden sounds nice! Yes, something to plan would be good, maybe.

On the upside, they're calling for it to get down to 32 here on Sunday, so I will probably not have long to wait for things to freeze back.

Exactly! And you have to make choices as to what is more important to you also. When I moved here, I just wanted more shade. Right now, shade is my enemy, and the trees outside my courtyard are getting bigger every year. I can't do anything about them, so I have to concentrate on doing something about my space. I need a bit of shade for a few tropicals, but most of them have acclimated themselves very well to the indoors in my sunny South window, so I can do with very little shade now. I need to get rid of the things causing too much shade so I can grow more veggies. Otherwise, I'm going to be restricted to growing greens in the winter.

Oh, Jofus. I wish I had known you when I lived in North Port. You would have loved my garden when it was beautiful, before I lost control of it.

This all sounds too familiar. When I bought this house 9 years ago and moved down from Ohio 8 years ago, my almost 2 acre sandhill property was just sand, longleaf, scrub oaks, sand, prickly pears and did I say sand?

It seemed so bare compared to the lush green of my yard up north. I was so excited that I had all this land and an almost blank palette. I started planting every plant I could get my hands on, willy nilly, without a plan. 8 years later it's a mess. I've planted things where I can't possibly reach with my garden hose and carrying buckets of water gets tiresome quickly. My yard drains so quickly that I could get 15" of rain in a day and you'd see no evidence of it within 15 minutes of it ending. And most of the tropicals I planted couldn't stand the freezes we get at least twice year. It's only in the past year or two that I've started planting more natives and drought tolerant plants that are more at home in my yard.

I pack 50 hours a week into a 4 day work week and with the 45 minute drive each way, I normally don't see daylight for more than an hour outside of work. So, the gardens get ignored until the weekend. I hopefully can retire in 7 more years and I've decided that when I do I'm going to actually draw up a plan, dig up most of the plants and start over with a more organized and manageable yard.

Jofus,

I noticed that you're in Englewood. Some of my best childhood memories were spent in Englewood for 2 weeks every summer. My aunt and uncle had a winter home there and let their relatives use it free of charge during the summers. It sat right on the water and they had a boat for us to use too. They even had a membership to some private island, don't remember the name.

Rhonda