When my husband and I moved into our house more than three and a half years ago, I was super-excited by the possibilities of our backyard.

Along the side of our house, and in a sunny position, was an already established vegetable patch and fruit trees. Along the back and to the right was an ornamental garden.

However as time has gone on I have become more and more frustrated with the existing garden. The previous owners had used pebbles as a mulch and every time I tried to plant something I had to gouge what felt like thousands upon thousands of pebbles out of the way before I could put anything in. And runner grass. My goodness how I hate runner grass. It twines itself around the roots of established plants until it is almost impossible to remove.

This year, I’ve had enough. The task of digging the runner grass out of my vegie patch (for the third year in a row) combined with a back still recovering from surgery meant that (for once) I could gain no satisfaction from the task. I put my foot down and insisted to my husband that we rip up the lawn. This was an easier task than I expected. He dislikes attempting to mow down that side of the house due to the small path and graduated levels.

Tomorrow I’ll put up a photo of my planned changes, but to give you an idea, this is what the side of the house looked like before the weeding attempt began on the weekend.

See that black square? That’s where the vegie patch is meant to be.
I know, right?

Have you undertaken any major backyard operations?