Guess I might as well post the ugly along with the good on this thread. My back yard had been somewhat negleted over the last couple years due to the amount of time I spent caring for my mother before her death. One huge problem is that a very invasive Dutchman's pipe vine has taken over about 25% of it. I planted it originally to cover and ugly chain link fence and for a couple years it work well. So well in fact that I moved some of it to a different location. Now maybe 18 years later it has taken over. It shoots long roots out 20' and they wind around my lilies and grow under the daylilies. I'm trying to dig as many of the roots out as possible, then when it starts to leaf out, am going to put a 9 month kill all vegetation spray on the leaves. Have a feeling it may take a few years of work to get it all under control..
I also got a new fence to replace the chain link one and am planning on redoing all my borders and paths thei year too. Right now the paths have landscape fabric at the bottom that has been topped with mulch a few times over the years. The mulch has decomposed and is now a nice fertile bed for weeds. I'm going to put all of it into my beds, relay landscape fabric and then hopefully by fall be ready to top it with peagravel and steppping stones much like my front garden. Lots of work, but I really want to get something more permanent done with the paths before I retire.
Here you can see one of the holes I've dug working on getting the vine roots out.
This area is not only taken over with the vine shoots, but also lots of creeping charlie. I'm going to rescue what plants remain and move them , then kill everything, Hopefully it will stop raining for a few day so I can start to spray.
This area is the other side of the above fence. Not only lots of vines, but also lots of ditch lilies that are really my neighbors, since the area between the fence and their garage belongs about half to them. I have been digging back the ditch lilies every year to keep them out of my yard, but think they are on the kill list for this too.
