A Battle with Barberry Bushes

I have a tremendous fear of needles and in my opinion thorns are just as bad. When we moved into our lovely house last year, our yard had 5 barberry bushes in the front flower beds. Now barberry bushes are quite popular around here, but I have no idea why. They are usually for most the of the year and then they turn red in autumn. They are nice looking, but they have huge, very sharp thorns all over them though.
I was so very grateful to my mom and dad who helped me remove two of the bushes from the front yard last year. I did not want to be wasteful of perfectly good shrubs so we moved them to the very back of the yard. Well, I am actually not sorry to say, they died. I had been planning on removing them and the three other thorny shrubs from the front yard this spring, but because of my phobia of sharp thorns, I had been putting it off. I finally got the nerves to pull them up and I put them out by the road. Well, after almost two weeks, they still had not been taken. So Bryan told me I was going to have to bag them up. The mere thought of having to cut the bushes apart and stuff them into bags was torture to me. So I did what any other fear stricken individual would do. I put it off. I carried them around back and they sat in the yard for a few more weeks. Finally, this weekend I decided I was going to be brave and cut them up, bag them up, and get them out of here. I worked very carefully and I only managed to get stuck by a thorn four or five times.
The battle with the barberry bushes was in a way a good task for me. Everytime I felt a thorn it reminded me of Jesus and what he must of felt as the thorn of crowns was placed on his head. I am afraid of a tiny prick from a thorn, and he was not only willing to wear a crown of thorns, but also die for me. Wow! How can I even complain and whine about some stupid, little thorns?

After it all, although I am thankful the barberry bushes are gone, I kind of liked having to overcome one of my fears while also finding something spiritual from it.

I did a lot of work this weekend so here is a recap in pictures:

Here are all of the barberry bushes bagged up and ready to go :)

Here is what our flower beds look like now with new mulch, new flowers, and those barberry bushes replaced with some nice firepower (thornless) bushes.

I also planted a small vegetable garden at the back of our yard. I started all of the seeds in one of those peat pot gardens. I am sorry to report that the rabbits have already dug up some of the broccoli and cauliflower. Those dang rabbits!!!!

I also planted two peony bushes on the right side of the house in hopes that I will have beautiful pink blooms sometime this summer.

On either side of our front door, I planted a beautiful variety of red begonias.

On the back deck we bought a table and four chairs so that we could enjoy the wonderful weather.

I also planted two planters full of a variety of flowers.

And last but not least, I re-established my herb garden. This saves us lots of money and it is very easy to take care of all summer long.