Operation Landscaping, part one of infinity

Last April, I spent a day working on the beds that line our side yard sidewalk, and Indy & I planted some hostas in May. Four of the five hostas came back this year (hooray!), but they weren't alone. This may come as a surprise to exactly no one, but it turns out that newspapers alone are not enough to hold weeds at bay, even with rocks on top.


Since we're completely redoing the vegetable garden anyway, I decided to re-use the landscaping fabric from the veggie patch as liner for the sidewalk beds. Since I never did anything with the long thin bed across from the hostas last year, I decided to start there first.

Indy says, "This is going to take a while."
(That tiny thing down at the end is a milk crate. Hold me.)


Section one. Relatively easy since I had removed most of the rocks from this corner last year. After this it got a little harder. Whoever originally landscaped the beds put down fabric under the rocks, but it has been so long since that was done that fully developed soil with worms and everything has covered the fabric and the lower layers of stones. And thus, before putting down newspapers and fabric, I have to dig out all the rocks and pull out the weeds.

It's not unpleasant work, especially on a really nice Spring day (which yesterday was), but it sure is time-consuming. Indy and I worked from 8:30 to 12:30 and then from 1:30 to 2:30, and this is as far as we got. We would have kept going, but it started to rain.


Here's what we have left to do on the right side, before we even get to the hosta beds:


I can honestly say I now fully understand why wealthy people hire landscapers and gardeners.

It's supposed to be pretty out this afternoon, so we're going to head out and try to make some more progress. Indy is currently napping, to save his strength for the rigors of supervising me.


Update

We went back out after lunch today and got another 6-foot section finished. We're now exactly halfway done, even though the photo doesn't show it very well.



I also found out today that EvilDucky has scored some more hostas from her coworker, so at some point, we'll plant those to prettify the now-empty side.


"Thanks for reading!"