Some people are addicted to HGTV, but I can’t stomach its overly perky hosts and their happy home-helper quick fixes. After 30 minutes, my head is buzzing with a severe case of kitchen envy followed by an equally severe case of organizational shame. I know every house has at least one chaotic closet or messy junk drawer; I’m just a little sensitive about mine. (Chaos is the natural order of the universe, right?)

Our yard is also a work in progress. The front generally looks good; it’s the back that harbors the HGTV nightmare — a 6-by-12-foot swath of weeds, discarded patio stones and 10 years’ worth of pruned branches. We simply call it the Nasty Patch.

Thus christened, it’s become the antagonist in our struggle for the perfect lawn. We even sang Janet Jackson songs in it’s honor (”Nasty - UH! - Nasty Patch, don’t mean a thing. Oh, you Nasty Patch, don’t mean a thing to me - UH!”)

After a year of bad jokes, bad pop songs and “helpful” suggestions from family members, the Nasty Patch’s days were numbered. When the kickball season ended, Brian hired one of our teammates to tame this troubled tangle. In less than four hours, Mike and Matt of Rosenlof/Lucas transformed the Nasty Patch into a blank canvas.

Bye-bye brambles. Hello black dirt. Now all we have to do it plant. But with what? As you can see, the site is a bit of a challenge. Nestled beneath two pine trees, it gets only dappled sun.

Because the gardening season is winding down, we need to act fast. Brian wants to go low maintenance and I really want to go native. We both like the idea of planting something for the birds as well as something for the humans. Should I call in a pro and get a garden plan? Just go it alone with some shade-tolerant natives? Or plant a cover crop and wait until spring to transform the nasty patch?

I seriously have gardening ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). With Memorial Day but a spring breeze away, I suddenly find myself woefully unprepared for the official start of the growing season.

An organized gardener would’ve dug up, tilled and mulched the unwanted butterfly garden in the front yard weeks ago. During the rainy days, she would’ve read her seed packets, referenced her books on companion planting and painstakingly planned out her beds with graph paper. She also would’ve repotted the peppers overcrowded in their seed starting tray.

Unfortunately for my dried-out planters the lemon thyme, mint and chives on the full-sun patio , I am not an organized gardener.

Sunday, dressed in my dirty jeans and gloves, I honestly had the best of intentions. On this day, the day my Sunday school teacher called the Lord’s day of rest (and who’s class I called boring because I’d rather be at home watching nature shows about cheetahs in the bush than learning about the burning bush), I determined to reclaim the front yard from the sedum and puprle cone flower. Shovel, rake and spade, I loaded up the wheelbarrow and marched out of the garage and into the morning sunshine.

As soon as I knelt in the dirt, I came face to face with my new nemesis — Or should I say nemeses?

No, it wasn’t a nest of fluffy bunnies or egg sack of spiders that made me scream and howl in pain. It was a squat, smug thistle plant. I was knealing on one with my hair tangled in another.

“What the…?”

I bolted up and surveyed the front yard. Thistle was everywhere - Embedded in the sedum, tangled in cone flower, and popping out of the Russian sage .

“Where the hell did all this thistle come from?”

An organized gardener would’ve raked and mulched the beds before the thistle seedlings could sprout. She would not be on her hands and knees following a thistle trail around the side of the house, straight though the back lawn and up to the top of a hill where a nasty patch of bristly weeds and gnarly buckthorn laughed at her.

“Buck-freaking-thorn? Sweet Jesus! Where did all these plants come from?”

Obviously, the invasives don’t believe in a day of rest, either. It was time to do a little bush burning of my own.

What does one do with such a lovely bouquet of thistle? Send it to an ex-boyfriend, a beloved politician, or the compost bin?

With all the rain, my garden is certainly sprouting. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one broadcasting seed in the soil.

My neighbor’s silver maple unleashed an army of tiny helicopters. Despite my best defensive maneuvers, a dozen successfully landed and embedded themselves in my garden. These intruders were easily identified and destroyed. A maple seedling looks just like – surprise – a maple.

Other sprouts remain a mystery, even with their second leaves.

Looking at my companionly planted garden beds, I suddenly understood why gardeners plant only one crop in each row. It is easy to tell friend from foe. Sprouts outside the rows are weeds. Disparate sprouts inside the row are weeds.

Because I planted my veggies and flowers in clusters, I don’t know which little green sprout is a wanted plant and which little green sprout is a weed. Nothing is more than two inches tall. Should I weed now or wait?