Taking Control

This spring and summer have been busy.  Jon and I were busy for a couple months training and participating in the Texas Water Safari, a.k.a. the "World's Toughest Canoe Race," a 260 mile canoe race from San Marcos to Seadrift, TX.  Then, my project at work got hectic and included some international travel to Malaysia.  Needless to say, I haven't gotten to spend as much time in the garden as I would like, and even less time doing necessary things, like weeding.  I will be going on another international business trip soon for a few weeks, so I knew I needed to get on top of the weeding, before things get even more out of control.

I started with the bulb bed, since this was the bed that has the most flowers that were being overrun with weeds.

After several hours of serious weeding (I generally use my pick ax for these situations, which help break up the weed root systems the best), I put down several layers of newspaper, and then brown mulch on top to try to keep down future weeds.

I had two bags of mulch left over, so I decided to next weed and mulch my bougainvillea plant that is in front of the backyard deck.  I ran out of newspaper, so before I put the mulch down, I used some old weed-block material I had lying around.

Finally, I wanted to start prepping one of my new backyard garden beds for planting, so I weeded it and laid down cardboard to prevent the weeds from growing again.  I plan to order some dirt and compost later this week, which my helpful husband said he is willing to haul into my new bed for me.  The dirt and compost will go on top of the cardboard, and the cardboard will decompose over time.

I still have several of the new beds that I need to weed out before we can prep them for planting, but they will have to wait for another day.