State of the North Border: Taming invasive rhizomatic weeds mugwort, poison ivy and miscellaneous vines

If you've been reading about my struggles to tame what I like to call the "north border," these before and after photos will knock your socks off. A few weeks ago I ordered mulch. I had no idea how much to order, so after some back of the envelope calculations, I ordered way more than I originally thought I'd need and way less than the calculations suggested I needed, and just shut my eyes when I pressed "confirm" on the online order form.

In the middle of last week, at the office, I got a nice, demure text from Capel: "mountain of mulch" was all he wrote, with a handy photo illustration (his photos are so much more elegantly composed than mine and his writing so much more succinct!).

I'm sure his first thought was, where are all the people with wheelbarrows to go along with this mulch? ... knowing he's it. 

In any event, just to review, my last post on the project was here. Just because the difference is so spectacular, here are a few of the before shots again ...

Our job? To move this pile of mulch from here ...

to here ...

And this, the result ...

These photos give no indication of the amount of grouching that one slightly put upon husband gave me, in the process of an entire day of wheeling the wheelbarrow from one side of the lawn to the other ... but they do show what an amazing difference it makes. Night and day, one might say.

Still, there are things shooting up all over at this point. It will be an ongoing effort to keep up with the force of nature here, I think. Some indications ...

 Mugwort, nicely cropping up all along the edge of my barricade, to be mowed ...

A pretty pink bush of some sort, about to bloom. I've got no idea what this is. And lurking behind, in its innocuously flaming red spring gown, a giant patch of poison ivy (this one, on the neighbor's side, I'm pleased to see).

Next to it, an andromeda, pretty in early spring ...

and more poison ivy, this one on my side ...

beneath this mountain laurel, which my neighbor Rosie put a ton of work into last summer, removing a huge tangle of vines. But still, a nice lot of weed bushes on my side of the property there ...

along with violets ...

Coincidentally, the daughter of the former owner tells me that the mountain laurel was brought from the Poconos, in Pennsylvania. I am so happy to hear that. I wondered how it got here. A transplant, I think. Like me. I didn't grow up in Pennsylvania, but I spent ten years there before moving to New York, hiking happily, and this bush brings back happy, happy memories of many hikes among the spring laurel in the mountains.

But, back to mundane reality, vines, shooting up out of the smaller rhododendron, which I think is blooming early as a sign of stress ...

last year's dead vines hanging everywhere around it ...

a string of old hosta, wrapped like a charming little necklace around its feet, waiting to be weeded ...

a pretty little azalea next to it, red, I think, with a maple tree growing up through it ...

another azalea, next in line, this one white, also with a weed bush growing up into it ...

and beyond that, older, more established bushes, a red azalea, about to burst ...

and the second andromeda ... also with a maple tree growing straight up its middle ... vines yet to leaf out there ...

much work to be done and I'm thrilled to have a reason to spend hours and hours contentedly hacking away in the dappled shade of the dogwood working on an old, beloved garden that other hands have also tended ... shush ... don't tell anyone!