I’m constantly battling with my yard in sunny SD. In a previous life, I had a 110-foot raised bed of so-called “prize” floribunda roses. They cost more to maintain per month than my own individual food bill. And I didn’t even own any stock in the Scotts Company but probably should have:
I used to don heavy rubber gloves while still in my swimsuit and turn on the floodlights in the dark to spend my token hour-plus cutting them back about once per month. Since I was gone and under fluorescent light in an office or commuting 9.5 – 10 hours per day, 5 days a week, I really never got to enjoy them much in the daylight. The time I spent feeding them, cutting them back and exterminating them far exceeded the time it took me to properly care for my three cats!
Such is the price of living in a SFR in SD sans (expensive) gardener.
Shoveling snow a few times per year (hopefully just the walks) while getting a few months reprieve from “gardening duty” seems like a fair tradeoff for “snow-clime dwellers.”
