It's a Jungle Out There

Ah, Sunday morning. Time for sleeping in, a lazy breakfast, and coffee on the deck. You head out the door, take a sip, look to your left...

...aaah!! When did that get there? A closer inspection revealed the true extent of the jungle that had formed in our backyard. 

Perhaps I need to go out there more often, 'cause I had no idea we were sportin' this...situation. Thoughts of a lazy Sunday morning over the paper went out the window as I resolved to get this jungle under control.

I donned my yard work clothes, got the requisite shovel, rake and trash can assembled, and set to work. You know your yard is bad when you can't distinguish between what's a weed and what isn't.  So, quite quickly, I resolved that everything was coming out, some fresh mulch would be put down, and we'd replant in the spring.

Hours later, and we were making some progress...

...having dug out everything except the rose bush and the unknown thing at the right end that we couldn't dig out 'cause we were too tired. (It did get quite a trim, though.)  

We even discovered some buried treasure. And by treasure, I mean an old tennis ball buried by the pup that used to live here, and part of a rake that was quite annoying to dig out. Either way, for what it's worth, Chester approved of all our hard work.

We decided to put a bit of effort into two things: 1) getting the mulch at least six inches away from the house, to prevent termites; and 2) grading the mulch so that water would run away from the house.

We recycled the big rocks that were living under our deck and did a border against the house first.

Then, we got bags of stones from Lowes to finish the rock border. 

Before we mulched, we decided to try out some landscape fabric to keep the weeds at bay. We've never used it before, so we'll let you know how it works out in the long run. I cut it into pieces to fit the space and laid it all out.

And finally, we got down to some mulching. 

We're hoping these pretty stones will serve a purpose...

...and keep the water and termites away. And now, here's what I see when I go on my deck to enjoy some coffee.

It's definitely a lot more bare, and we've resolved to put some azalea bushes out there in the springtime to put some color back there. But for now, at least this little section of our yard isn't a jungle anymore.