Gardening Bug

I love pretty gardens. You can't tell in the picture at the top but I have added a rose garden in front of the porch. I love the look. I love the smell when the roses are all in bloom and a breeze is blowing in the front windows but I hate the amount of work involved.

I just tend to feel like I am putting out fires, you know?
Sigh.

 Isn't it beautiful? Yeah, it's from my istock account. I don't really have that. But I would love to, wouldn't you?


Anyway, one of these days I want to have a front garden with winding pathways. I want an outdoor kitchen on the side of the house, with a huge patio and I want garden patios here and there along my winding pathways. And, most of all, I want a well muscled, tanned, male gardener to look after all of it for me, while I sit back and..umm... enjoy the view. Of all my flowers, of course, what did you think I meant?

The thing is, at this house... in this place... by this creek...I am always having to consider the potential of a major flood taking out all of my hard work. It could happen. It HAS happened. More than once.

I think raised beds are the key to it but I am not sure how to put them in with the available time I have. I'd love to have a cutting garden, an herb garden, and of course...my vegetable garden. I'd like to have paver pathways meandering from on to another and benches here and there to stop, rest, and watch the birds.

I get how to make raised beds, and paver pathways, and everything. It isn't that I don't know how to do it .. it is a time thing.
These ready made frames make it easier, but the cost is higher. :/ Decisions decisions...right?

Maybe someday?