It looked like this while I was creating it in 2008.
Spring 2009 was glorious.
My energy has been elsewhere for the most part in the years since then, and the weeds moved in. You don't notice them so much while the roses are blooming ...
... or when a lovely fog moves in.
I don't have graphic, ugly "Before" photos of the weeds as they were before my friend Robert and I got to work on them last Thursday morning. Trust me, it was a horrible situation. It took the two of us most of the day, but we succeeded in getting three of the four beds in this garden cleared out.
It is now up to me to finish the job. I raked the beds and applied Preen, to prevent the latent weed seeds in the soil from germinating. (I can barely imagine how many seeds must be in this soil. Crabgrass, Wild Violets, Poke Weed, etc., sprout almost immediately in any bare patches of ground.) Landscape fabric was the next step.
By the end of the day yesterday, I had one whole bed mulched and completely finished and another bed was covered in landscape fabric and ready for mulch.
My goal for today is to try to get the rest of this load of mulch out of the back of my truck. There is not enough in there for me to finish the second bed ... that's okay, I will get more mulch this weekend. (For now, I need an empty truck so I can make a run to Lowes to get some materials to have on hand to can work on the Shack when I get the opportunity.)
Fighting the war, one weed at a time. It feels good to be making progress ... keeps my energy up to continue with the battle.