I give up

Once upon a time, I had this vision of a portion of my backyard being rather wild, but wild in a manageable way, full of plants that are native and attract birds, bees, and butterflies. Like many of my ideas, I started out too big and became overwhelmed with the amount of work to keep it all under control. Even with the help of my SO, we could not keep the undesirables like Canada thistle and Queen Anne's lace to a minimum.

Last year I mowed the area with the idea of turning the meadow into a mini orchard, but once again, this summer it had its way with me and my limited time and energy. I blame the daffodils - I wanted to save them all! - and the rains, which made everything grow rampantly, including the weeds.

With the rabbit damage in the garden, I reached my limit with anything that resembled bunny habitat, and in one fell swoop (which took an entire day), the meadow went from this:

to this:

I felt bad about it for about 5 minutes. Now it is a relief to see it all gone (I'm guessing the neighbors feel the same way). I still want to have some plantings for the birds, bees, and butterflies, but on a much smaller scale.