Back To The Back 40 (Inches)

Finally, it's cool enough to do some outside work, starting with the Back 40 (Inches). I did a lot of new planting this past spring, now I'm checking what survived the summer, weeding, and pulling some of the ground cover away from other plants and bushes.

Because the plants were new and needed space to grow -- especially the ground covers -- I couldn't use mulch. So, over the summer, the ground cover (campanula) got a bit outta control, surrounding some azaleas and ferns. I spent much of the past couple of days removing fencing*, trimming the campanula back, and adding mulch around the azaleas and ferns. There's still a lot of that to go.

Today I spent nearly two hours pulling centipede grass stems out of a small gazania patch (not shown). My dogs like to munch on centipede grass, so, once I removed the fencing, I had to get rid of the grass to keep them from walking all over the gazanias.

* Temporary fencing was all around the new plants in the Back 40 (Inches), including the gazanias (front), to keep dogs out until the plants could take root.