My Biggest Gardening Regret - Photos Not Taken

Remember when I told you all about this combined border makeover?  Well, with all the late season blooms - rudbeckia, sedum and aster - it's looking DAMN good to me, and to my neighbor, too.  This is the view from her deck looking toward my garden.  But what I can't show you is a "before" photo of this border, which is another instance in my continuing saga of before photos not taken. I think it's because who wants to record something ugly?  Then by the time it occurs to me, the transformation is under way and it's too late.

Next up, though, is the transformation of my neighbor's front garden - before and after shots. 

Now if you're wondering what the hell I'm doing working on my neighbor's garden, you're not alone.  (I'm known in these parts as the Constant Gardener.)  Yeah, I've got an untreated addiction and there's no 12-Step program for the disease of gardening.

Comments

[blackswamp_girl (Kim)]

Not only is there no 12-step program, but also you seem to be surrounded by enablers! Lucky you--er, I mean, you need help now! ;)

Can't wait to see the pictures... and like you, I find it hard to take pictures of the uglier spots in my garden. Like, every "before" picture for which I do not have an immensely better "after" picture to post alongside it. Immediately.

[Carol]

Funny comment about enablers... I have a few of those around me, too.

The "after" picture looks very nice and tranquil.

[Pam/Digging]

I'm sorry there's no "before" too, but the "after" looks fabulous.

[Leslie]

I find it hard to know what is a before photo...until compulsion hits and I need to change something and by then it's too late to stop and take pictures..

[Jenn]

I weed grass and such out of other's plantings - such as the lovely parking lot medians at my local Costco - the perennials thank me for it - my SO cringes and pretends he doesn't know me.

[firefly]

Wow. I really, really like that border -- I hope the various beds in my "yarden" look half that good next year.

I didn't take "before" pictures either, which I regret because it would be nice to have a real record of everything I changed, but then again, documentation is kind of a drag -- I did well to draw maps of the various beds listing all the plants in the notebook I'm not so good at keeping.

I did try to take photos of the yard periodically, so I got a decent sequence of beginning, middle, and end pictures.

I should probably go out and snap some shots of the frost-ravaged garden and call that "before" for next year :-)

[Millie]

I am NOT a constant photographer at all, but I DID take lots of pictures of my slum backyard before I began to garden, and I love looking at them occasionally for the ego-boost they give me when I'm feeling down about why things are less than perfect out there.

[ginger]

LOL at all the gardening addicts out there! Thank God there is no 10 or 12 step program. In five years that will look like a 'before' picture! A beautiful border and a lucky neighbor.

[blackswamp_girl (Kim)]

Oh... my other picture regret, which I failed to mention, is not looking at the details before I click the button. I find myself looking at pictures I would otherwise like to post and getting embarrassed... seriously, would it kill me to check a vignette for WEEDS before I take a snapshot of it?!!

[Annie in Austin]

All of this is too true, Susan! Can't keep from gardening wherever we go, and never remember the before photos.

Some technology helped me out - although I'd taken very few B4 stills when we moved here, my husband took old-fashioned, non-digital video for our out-of-state families. You tech people may laugh, but it took me this long to find out that a video capture card can take a frame off the video and turn it into a photo file. Before photos! Yay!

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

[Kasmira]

I find my best "before" photos as little bonuses in the background of other photos. Sometimes it pays not to do a lot of cropping. You never know when that background will come in handy!

[Pam J.]

Thanks for the tip. Today I bought a disposable camera (tells you what kind of photographer I am) and took a bunch of pictures of my little garden spaces. I've been in this house for 20 yrs and I consider these my "before" pictures. I have high hopes for the future. Between GardenRant and TakomaGardener I have all the guidance I'll ever need.

[chuck b.]

I *wish* my neighbors would let me work in their gardens. That would be fabulous. But my boyfriend would never see me, so it wouldn't work.

I only remember I want to take a 'before picture' right after I get started. And by then I don't want to stop. So what I do instead is walk around the garden every week taking random pictures of things I don't like figuring eventually I'll be fixing those things anyway.

[Garden Fountains Enthusiast]

Let's see, there's a 12-step program for Alcoholics Anonymous, one for Narcotics Anonymous, another one for porn addiction, and believe it or not, a 12-step program for blogging addiction (no joke!). I doubt there will ever be a 12-step program for garden addiction because this is one “dependency” that is good for a person’s physical, psychological, and spiritual well being. Besides, it sounds like you are planting the seeds that could possibly lead to a fruitful relationship with your neighbor! :-)