Hard Labor

When I first moved into my home, there were tons of raspberry bushes growing on the northern side of my garage. You cannot imagine my excitement. The thought of eating fresh raspberry every summer kept my hopes up. Well, several years later, the bushes have not produced any berries and I'm no longer excited. Nor do I have any more hopes for these raspberry bushes. So, I took a rational approach and decided that it was best to take out all of the raspberry bushes since it was taking up precious gardening space.

On a recent weekend, I cut down all of the very thick and thorny raspberry canes and pulled out by hand the smaller canes. I then used a shovel and hoe (which also had a two-prong pick) to dig into the soil and dislodge huge roots, once more using a lot of elbow grease to pull out the roots. A soil rototiller would have immensely helped my efforts (and my aching muscles), but I think I got the bulk of the roots out. At this point, I may have to rent a tototiller to help loosen up the soil and take out any more roots. Already I'm planning what to do with this space. It's a narrow space, but I'd still like to do something with it--maybe a secret garden (who knows).