Weeding

Okay, so last summer I spent a large chunk of each week weeding all the areas of our yard. There are a lot. I was pregnant and it was a hot summer. So far this summer has been a lot better, heat wise anyway, and I'm not pregnant so I can get a lot more done in a day. There is some sort of satisfaction in accomplishing this daunting task. The other evening I finally got the front strip done, it took two days. All the weeds were taller than the bushes, I hadn't weeded this area at all this year, and you could not see any of the dirt/bark area. The week before I got the rock area by our front door done. The week before that Colby and I tackled the corner of our front yard. You couldn't see anything but weeds here. No rock, or city power box, and the bushes and such were hidden beneath the obnoxious growth. As you can see we already need to weed again, but such is the cycle.And, he has slowly pulled some throughout our rose bushes on the side of the house. These are located near the garage. I still need to prune these all the way back. Every time Gabe plays in the sandbox, I try to tackle some of the weeds in the dog-run. This is on the other side of the fence behind the rose bushes. No, we don't have a dog, the previous owners had two. We have cleaned it up, and would like to do something creative and fun with this area in the future. But, we will have to save up our $ again to put work into it. Now does anyone have any ideas for the island area where our only trees are located. They had it landscaped with bark right when we bought the home, but we soon found that the strong winds we get all the time, blew all that ground cover away. And now, we just have black pieces of landscape tarp flapping in the breeze. It looks really tacky. But, we are stumped as to what to put here. Seeing how this is our first yard ever, please overlook how little we know about yard care.