A spot of weeding

With five acres to try and manage, there are always a thousand jobs waiting for you.  Having said that, its one of the things I like about living on acreage. But one of those jobs is weeding beds you're trying to do something with.  I often take a philosophical approach to weeding and simple think of it as mulch, and just do a "chop and drop".  At least some additional organic matter is going into the soil.  But every now and again, you really want to get an area up to the next level.  And it was the Fig Tree area's time.

This area is right next to the driveway as you come up to the house and right next to the pool, so its been a bit of an eye sore, even though I told myself the line about organic matter.  The previous owners, or the one's before them I suspect, had put some rocks along the front to edge it, but these had long become overgrown.  Now a few things conspired yesterday - wanting to put some more weeds in for the chicks to dig around in, some left over lucerne bales from a bulk buy we did and a spurt of energy.  So out came the substantial weeds (taking about a dozen bucket loads down to the little girls), down went some cardboard and then the lucerne.  What I also discovered on the low side of the garden bed was that the old owners had also edge it with wooden retaining planks, so I reinstated these as well, so the whole are is now nicely bordered and heavily mulched.  I had planted two cherry bushes and a fig tree last year and they have been slowly doing their thing, but with all that new weed-free space, I couldn't leave it at that.  So I also went and bought a few more edibles to fill the gaps - artichokes, capsicum, fruit salad sage, pineapple sage and purple basil.  And they are all looking extremely happy in their new home.  So now at least when I drive up the driveway, I look over happily at my handiwork, rather than adding another chore to my growing list (for now).