Progress

My focus these past few days has been to remove all the pine straw to the right of the raised bed, remove the cardboard underneath, dig out all the weed/grass roots and sod, then replace the cardboard and top it all off with a thick layer of pine bark mulch.

Here's what it looks like right now, after an hour or so on Sunday and about three hours today.  Only half done! By the way, my cardboard experiment was definitely not a total flop.  The only thing living under the cardboard is the Bermuda or crab grass, whichever it is. All the other stuff, including clover, is long gone and rotted away.  And, the roots of the grass seem weaker .  These areas are much easier to clean out than the areas that have had no cardboard.  Hindsight tells me that I should have put the pine bark down in the first place, instead of the pine straw, but I thought it would be too expensive and I'd need to buy in bulk and have it delivered.  Wrong on both counts.  I doubt that it would have cost much more than the pine straw, and since I can buy it in bags at HD, it comes home in the car.  Not all at once, but that's OK.

I've done my bit for today and am now crunching on some freshly-roasted peanuts (from my own oven).  Then, it's time to chill, rest the old body.