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This past weekend the weather was lovely, so I took on the project of taking out the massive, invasive butterfly bush that was planted by the previous owners. It's been on the to do list for ages, and I'm very happy to have it finally done! We've so much more space now, and we won't have to worry about constant pruning to keep it from growing over the garden path. I thought for sure I was going to have to take up part of the path to dig it out, but somehow the roots were positioned such that it barely disturbed the path at all. I did relocate a number of strawberries and a few bulbs, but I had been planning on moving them anyway, so no loss there. 

I also cleared out dead growth from the square plot and found a lot of new calendula coming up, which is always exciting to see. I'm hopeful that I won't need to plant anything new in that bed, and that everything will have either self-seeded or will come back up on its own as the weather warms. My goal is to have most of the garden full of perennials and self-seeding annuals so I've less to do in terms of planting every year, but there's still lots of space to fill, so it'll be a couple of years yet before that's realized.

And in the backyard, I got the nettle potted up! It would be exciting to see that flourish this summer - safely far away from places people walk, and helpfully contained so as not to cause A Problem. I still want a few more pots out there for other aggressive spreaders - I have lemon balm I need to relocate from the front, and various other seeds in the mint family I'd like to plant without them taking over.