What I saw was this:
When I set up the beds last fall, I knew it wouldn't be pretty until I covered those paths. Not pretty at all:
I'm sure the neighbors to the west, who can see my entire back yard from the second story windows of their beautiful, worth-twice-as-much-as-mine, house, have been cursing all winter about the trashy person who moved in over here.
I knew I wanted to cover the paths with wood chips, but I haven't found a reliable first-hand source (i.e., tree trimmer) yet, and garden centers don't generally sell such things in the winter. I realized, however, that the big boxes are starting to have only two seasons - Christmas and outdoors - and they've already started to stock mulch around here. A quick online search told me I could get plain cedar chips at the big blue box. Score!
The other thing I hadn't quite figured out, however, was what I was going to do to keep that mulch from simply sliding into the grass. With no edging, I doubt the paths would stay covered, especially when it rains.
I'm not going to lie. I'm pretty proud of what I figured out...
We have this retaining wall, which is going to fail at some point:
Presumably to avoid mowing, the people that built it covered the top portion, from the house on the left past the trash can on the right, with large river rock. So large, it's hard to walk on. One of our spring projects is going to be to get rid of all that rock so we can start figuring out how to fix the wall. Well....if it's large and we want it off the wall, why not use it somewhere else?
Ding ding ding! So, I spent a couple hours Sunday afternoon chucking large rocks off the wall, into the yard. I have to say, there must be something primal about rock throwing. It was so much fun.
I stayed focused, however, and gradually made my way around the entire raised bed area.
Then, with some help from D, I filled in the entire area with beautiful cedar chips.
Now that is a much better view:
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