The weedy berm, month #1 (May 2013)

Naturally, having a weedy berm is very embarrassing. Embarrassing enough that it has been sitting here behind my bedroom window being weedy for eight years with little to nothing done to beat it into submission. Sadly, I had given up enough in the past two years to simply insist on keeping the bedroom blinds firmly shut so that I didn't have to look at the thing.

What all of the preamble essentially means: I have no true "Before" photos of the weedy berm. The photos below cannot possible begin to capture the horror that was the weedy berm. What I have done, in order to give you the remotest possibility of picturing it, is to download a photo of someone else's weedy berm to post here, for your reference. Keep in mind that my berm, while much smaller in square area more likely than not had 200-300% the weed volume captured by the photo. Did I mention that it was weedy?


Someone else's weedy berm: for your reference

The biggest problem with having a weedy berm behind your bedroom window is knowing there is a pond up in there somewhere, with plants and fish in it that you took the time and trouble to transplant from your last home to this one and have totally neglected since.

The next biggest problem is that your husband has finally gotten so done with the entire situation that he has threatened to bulldoze it all if you don't do something with "your precious pond" really, really soon. Translation: "Now".

In my previous posts I detailed my efforts to bring the pond and the garden along in my first month of working on rectifying the scene outside my bedroom window. This post is just to show the progress of the berm from weedy mess last summer and all summers before (approximation above) to this spring with all weeds rounded up and mowed as possible plus one month.

The weedy berm conquering began when I was away at the Rolex Kentucky 3 Day Event in late April. I was gone for four days with my daughter and the weather near home was warm and calm. The perfect Round-Up weather. I had my husband mow and whack the weeds the best he could first (real man work) and then just blanket spray the Round-Up on anything that was left (avoiding the pond plants which I would handle myself.) He did a great job and I got to work the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after my trip to Kentucky and this was where we ended up (May 3rd)

The berm on May 3rd, after mowing and Round-up


Berm is only mildy weedy here on May 3rd

A couple of days later I started to realize I had a real problem here: gardening on a hill isn't fun. The soil is destined to roll down the hill and end up in a big deposit at the bottom, leaving plants above with naked roots. Plus a large expanse of dirt with nothing to break it up is just boring.

May 7th: a very boring looking hill

May 7th: just a hill with weeds

I had a neighbor over walking the property (handyman, I am hiring him for a couple of farm projects) and he had the bright idea to get some flagstone / outcropping and do a terracing thing. what a great idea. Glad he thought of it before I started putting plants in the ground. My husband and I did a little rock shopping on Mother's Day and brought home a few key pieces and I got busy installing them. It became evident pretty quickly that we had a bit less than 1/2 of what we needed, rock-wise. But it was a good start.