Poor Woman's Patio

The semester's winding down, but during rare breaks I've been dumpster diving for concrete pieces and gradually digging out the mess of nasty weeds in the backyard. Today I finished a partial patio in the backyard, which I made completely from free concrete and stone, and which will hopefully keep the enormous weeds from coming back.

Here's the corner of yard with the dead weeds last fall. They were green and lush in the summer when they filled the whole corner. The dogs even had a tunnel system through them.


The root system is a crazy web across the whole area, and I dug up hundreds of nasty clumps like this:


Here's the strip once I tore out the dead dry stalks, before digging


My rag-tag collection of concrete and cinder blocks that I've been collecting:


and the final "patio":


I left 2-foot aisles around the washer pit (I made washer pits for Zach's birthday last month! He got the first cupper!), which I'll plant with some sort of vine-y ground cover. Next weekend, when all my finals are done, I'll plant my square foot garden in the big wooden box. I bought a bunch of heirloom seedlings at a neighborhood sale yesterday, and even planted a bunch of seedlings inside last week. I'm still shocked that they're sprouting, which is silly because that was the whole point. But I didn't screw it up yet! Exciting!

It's still looking pretty shoddy back there, but I think it'll come together!