New Garden 2009

There has always been a garden in front of our house. It was home to azalea plants, creeping pine trees, amaryllis, and other assorted plants. The weeds and grass, however, outdo all the plants and flowers.

When we get back home to Florida after spending 5 months or so in Connecticut the weeds and grasses have completely taken over. What to do? We tried garden matting to control the grass and weeds. No luck, the stuff just poked up through the matting and the material fell apart. We put in bags and bags of mulch. The pesty stuff loves growing in mulch. Nothing seemed to work. Even the weed killer was not effective.

This year when we got back the garden was in worse shape than ever. That's it, I thought. The whole damn garden is coming out. Ten or twelve large trash bags and one pile of stuff and there was nothing left but dirt and two sprinklers.

I went to Lowes and put my 10% military discount to work and got a 100-foot roll of ground cloth made to control grass and weeds. Remember the other stuff that did not work and fell apart after a while? This stuff is guaranteed to last for 15 years. We will see. I put three layers of this material down and then put rubber mulch on top of it.

Now it was up to Shirley to decide what to put in there. She decided to use pots and put whatever plants she liked in them. First in were two mums. Next we went to our favorite plant vendor in Renningers flea market and got three bromeliads and a some nameless plant.

So, hopefully the labor intensive garden is a thing of the past and this one will make us happy.