I’ve mostly been lurking over that last while, not that I was ever a prolific poster. I’ve learned a lot from LSC, but don’t necessarily have a lot to contribute aside from the occasional photo of my layout. Anyway, I was so busy with school (finally finished and now have a sheepskin that says I’m a bonafide “Auto Restorer”), life, and “stuff” that I haven’t posted much. This winter I didn’t manage to get any of the buildings from the layout inside to refurbish them, which is when I usually work on that sort of thing. I bought a few additional live steamers in anticipation of spring, but… between school activities being canceled for my three school-age kids and work going a little crazy, that got away from me too. Then in February I started having some shoulder pain and was diagnosed with moderate to severe osteo-arthritis in both shoulders–apparently all that humping a ruck and jumping out of planes in my misspent youth caught up with me. Three weeks ago I looked out my back window at the layout and realized that the grass had grown up so much that some parts weren’t visible, and the ROW was overgrown with sedum and juniper. Thus the title of this post.
I’m trying to decide what to do about having a layout in my backyard that I’m going to have trouble keeping up with. I used to visit Garden Railroad Gizmos in Wichita (Claudia’s store and associated layout) and always felt a little sad about the state of her layout, which was adjacent to the parking lot and which had apparently gotten away from her in much the same way that mine has gotten away from me. Part of the joy of GR for me has been both the trains and the gardening. That intersection of interests is what drew me to the hobby. But with my shoulders the way they are, I’m not going to be able to keep the weeds out–here in Kansas I need to spend a couple hours a week to keep things under control and I just can’t do it for more than very short stretches.
I’ve enlisted the help of my kids (the oldest one at least can tell the grass from the sedum) and there’s a high schooler at our church who is planning to be a botanist who will come do gardening for a small fee. And I can still put glyphosate on the ROW to keep off the sedum. But I’m not sure even those things will enable me to keep things in shape to run trains–especially in the spring and summer when weeds here in Kansas grow like, well, weeds. If I can’t manage to at least keep the track clear enough to send a train around a couple times a month, I’m thinking it might not make sense to keep the layout in its current form.
I know there are others on here with health challenges (more difficult than mine in many cases) and was wondering if anyone had thoughts or suggestions about how I might manage to salvage my hobby. Ideas that don’t include selling all my stuff dirt cheap 
Dan
