Ideals are like birds, high flying, beautiful and hard to hold down to the ground. What do you do when you're actually faced with a weed-choked piece of land? Or an blank page of bare soil around a new home? Or the quackgrass from a neighbor's yard twines itself around the roots of a favorite azalea? Or....? Or.....?

Problems usually fall into these categories:

1. Something we love (or at least want in our garden) is sick or dying. Advice? Let it go. Nine times out of ten the conditions aren't right for it to flourish. Find something else that will do well.
2. We're being invaded by plants we don't want: weeds. Advice? Spend the time or money to get rid of them (talk to them about it) and then choose your own method of covering the soil, usually mulch or groundcover or both. Nature abhors bare ground. Get rid of it.
3. Insects, animals, snails, etc. are destroying what we want to preserve. Advice? Make a choice. Either use an organic method to kill them, make a barrier to keep them out (a deer fence, for example) or stop growing what they enjoy.

   If you choose to kill or remove the offenders, tell them what you're doing and why. If you feel silly talking out loud in the middle of your lawn, go do some weeding and whisper. Don't worry about whether or not they hear you, just pretend.

4. Some tree or shrub is outgrowing its allotted space. Advice? Either find it a good home elsewhere or prune it respectfully, working with the natural shape, not against it. And, again, talk to the offending plant, telling it why you're doing this and (hopefully) promising to give new acquisitions the proper amount of room.