Cleaning up the daisy patch

I should have taken a "before" photo, but I forgot. I spent a couple of hours on Thursday and Friday cutting back the overgrown daisy patch, seen here as the wedge-shaped piece of ground next to the garden path. It's flanked by a fruitless prunus tree and a large forsythia. There's some more detail work to do, but if I don't do it, it won't really matter. Next spring the daisies will come back, as will the weeds, but I'll have a better shot at cutting the weeds out before they take over.

The daisies were between four and five feet tall. The weeds (brambles, vines, and assorted tree saplings) were getting taller. That's a rose in the middle. Now I have to think about getting that monster forsythia back under control.

The other thing I did was to fight back the incursion of thorny brambles just outside our northern fence, which runs the length of the property. That made it possible for me to run the lawnmower back there, keeping the woods at bay. Although, I must admit that, while I won the battle, I'm slowing losing the war.