Lots of Pain for a Small Gain

The boys and I continued work on the tea garden today.  Our goal was to spread some topsoil over the exposed maple tree roots and then finish the edging around the fence line.  Grandma and Liam completed half of the edging yesterday so we just had to do the rest.  Easy enough, right?  Wrong.  So, so, wrong.

This seems to be the way it is with this project: I think, oh, this step is going to be really difficult but just get it done and it will get easier after that.  But nope.  It seems that each subsequent task is actually harder than the last.  

Digging up the grass around the pond.  Hard.  

Building the waterfall.  Harder.  

Carrying all the rocks and building the ledge around the pond.  Harder still.  

Ripping up the grass around the maple tree intermingled with all the tree roots.  Really hard.  

And finally, today - edging the grass and raspberry canes around the back of the fence that were interwoven with dreaded (and super evil) landscape fabric.  So, so very hard.

Dealing with landscape fabric sneakily hidden under two inches of dirt and grass with weed roots growing right through it, was a nightmare.  Landscape fabric does not decompose.  It cannot be dug up.  It must be removed by ripping it up in (super heavy) strips cut using a utility knife.  Ugh.  Add in the fact that at least half of the area we dug up today was an extra prickly patch of wild raspberry canes - that do not even produce berries but still scratched the heck out of my arms - and you can see why today's job was the most challenging so far.  Sigh.

Our next task is to weed around the canes in the raspberry patch that we actually planted and do produce berries.  These are, unfortunately, no less prickly than the ones I ripped out today and I my arms are already so sore that I am dreading it.  I might need to find myself a suit of full body armour before proceeding.

Whew.  What a day!