Weeds to Wonderland, ok not "wonderland" but averagely decent flowerbeds and certainly better than they were because before they wereghastly and anything is better than weeds........

STEP ONE: weed all flower beds that had become a a jungle of weeds. Sadly I don't have a true "before" as I generally don't take photos of stuff round the house/yard that I'm embarrassed of and goodness I was mortified by the state of my flower beds.

They had got so bad through me flinging thousands of seeds about rather cavalierly at the beginng of the summer. I was **hoping** I'd have a beautiful wild flower garden that would be low mantinence so I could concentrate on my veggies. (My tomatoes are spectacular - thanks for asking!)

Every single seed seemed to form a shoot, so there was a certain amount of boasting on my behalf about how stunning it would be when the flowers arrived and how unusual it was for so many seeds to take etc etc.


So I waited.....And the seeds grew.....And grew....From gentle carpet of shoots, to a thicket, to a jungle, They grew....

.....And one measly purple flower appeared.

(Side note: I'd lost interest in the whole palava by this stage so I only knew of this flowers existence because I'd told everyone about my shoots and someone mentioned to me that it was there.)

This flower died a solitary death a mere 72 hours later, probably of loneliness. That was pretty much that for flowers and me this summer, unti today!



After weeding I did something truly unusual for Arabella. I DID THINGS PROPERLY. I went to Home Depot and bought landscaping fabric. I feel a little guilty about this, my environmental conscious tells me I could have usedbiodegrable newspaper to do the job of stopping weeds. My husband, the purse strings, made me feel guilty about the $10 I spent on the stuff.

But I persevered: due to cost and environmental guilt (what would the Lorax say about Home Depot brand landscaping fabric?!) I decided to follow instructions to the letter.

I laid it perfectly straight as one is meant to.I secured it tightly to the soil as one is meant to.I cut neat crosses with a Stanley knife for the plants t poke through as one is meant to.

OK OK, that last one is a lie. I used kitchen scissors and instead of neat crosses just made weird holes.



Here is a close up once plants were in. It looked pretty sketchy, rather links the pond liners my dad would get when we were little. I was disappointed, especially as I thought I'd secured it solidly and then had to use the ugly rocks everywhere to "really" hold it down.

So back to Home Depot it was, where I invested in a load of little stones which I put everywhere. I like the way it looks. It's certainly not British, but I suppose I have to embrace my new culture. It is all very Nevada.



As such I've run out of teeny stones, I rather underestimated how many I would need to its back t the store tomorrow. My very last chance to go for a while because on Tuesday it's back to school, wow where has the summer gone?!

Will post a finished photo once all stones are in etc, it may be a while till i get t Home Depot so be patient with me, plenty more stuff to blog about in the meanwhile!
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