Oh, the Joy of Pulling Weeds ...

Weeds, weeds and more weeds!

We bought our house a little over a year ago. It has a modestly sized yard on about a quarter-acre lot.

A relatively large portion of our yard however is bordered by river rock. An absurd amount, really. It's like the landscapers got lazy, and had space to fill, so they just threw down rock. I would much prefer a balance between that and mulch. And one day we'll have that. But not this year.

So as a result of the rock and the fact the landscape fabric probably hasn't been replaced since the house was built over a decade ago (hard to say, but I'm guessing it's true), we get a lot of weeds popping up in between all that rock. Managing our weeds has got to be one of my least favorite parts of owning a house.

Yesterday I caught my dog, who has not been feeling well, chomping down on a set of said weeds in the corner of our yard. So my husband and I spent about an hour pulling all the weeds that appeared during the week that we were out of town. They seem to come from nowhere!

Since we caught my dog eating the weeds, we are reluctant to spray in these areas particularly in the backyard, even though the spray says it is pet-friendly. Instead, we're just going to stay on top of the weeds.

On the bright side, I pull weeds no matter how small in my vegetable garden every day when I check on it, and our mulch project in the front yard areas has helped minimize the weeds that pop up there. I guess we've made some progress!

The one challenge we have, not being familiar with every plant, is knowing what's a weed and what to leave.


I ran into this in my vegetable garden. I saw from a distance that my garlic was looking great, and in fact, more had come in in the week I was gone. And then I got a little closer and found weeds that looked a lot like garlic popping up. The first one below is what looked like garlic from a distance, but close up ... was a weed. The second is my actual garlic.

NOT garlic

Garlic!

In our flower beds, I also ran into this challenge. Probably moreso as we did not plant our flower beds - we're maintaining what's there - what we inherited when we bought the house. So I'm still learning what plants we have. What's a weed? This did not turn out to be a weed.

Is this a weed? Turns out, nope.

I found these nearby, and they look strikingly similar and beautiful. Not pulling these!

Not a weed!

The joys of home ownership. While weed pulling is still my least favorite task in the yard, I still enjoy being out in the yard in the summer and if weed pulling is my excuse, I guess I'll take it!