Playing in my garden

Who likes gardening?

If you put up your hand, you probably KNOW something about gardening. Me? Not so much.

So when I have to "garden" it's really all about mowing the lawn, whipper-snippering and pulling a LOT of weeds.

And that's what I did today. My back aches. My fingers HURT. And I kind of smell. Well, it was pretty warm today. But I feel pretty good.

Things look minorly better. Cleaner, at least.

I found out that one plant I wasn't sure about is feverfew and although some pull it out as a weed, it also has nice little flowers in the summer that aren't bad. My neighbour dropped by, as you can tell. She also told me that the perrennial flowers that I bought last year and planted in the front are DEAD.

Boo!

And my lavender is mostly dead too. And pretty much everything in the wooden barrel on my deck -- dead. Sad story. Not sure how I did it. Well, it probably wasn't ME, per se, but just the winter. So now I'll have to go out and spend another couple of hundred bucks on some more greenery that might stick around for more than a year.

I really would like to have a plan and redo my landscaping with a magical rock garden that never grows weeds but looks just lovely with some decorative shrubbery and grasses. I've seen them on my walks around the neighbourhood. There's one on the way to Food Basics and one on the way to Starbucks. All innocent-looking. But harbouring the secret to the perfect garden.

How/where do I get this secret? Can I steal their garden?
Will you help me?