Oh wow, those pavers were really under all the weeds! It's looking so clean a pretty now. I'm in awe of the effort you've put in to cleaning them and the stones up as well as making your own soil. How did you find the time!?

We had a bird of paradise palm when we moved in and wanted to turn the area to veggie growing. They say that as long as you keep removing the leaves, any plant will die eventually. It took at least two years for shoots to stop coming through! The same with a rose bush we removed.

BLACK BLOODY PLASTIC MATT

Lol! It's not that woven stuff is it? I still find strings from that today when I'm digging and it's been years! It seems it could have been worse, though, recently someone shared some photos and asked how they could remove disintegrated carpet that had been used as weed matting. The base fibres had rotten away, so it couldn't be pulled up in one piece any more and there were synthetic fibres everywhere in the soil. The solution seemed to be to remove a whole layer of soil. The lesson here seems to be NEVER use carpet as weed matting.

Love the selfie. You should enter this into this month's Garden Journal Challenge. I've done the countdown wrong, so it is still open. I'll be wrapping up on Wednesday.