Did you feel that change in the Force? For 2 weekends I was doing serious gahdening. None of this amateur window box thing (OK, I was also doing that). I got permission from the other folks in the building and took the part of the garden that looked like this:
And turned it into this:
First, I will say the reason I dug up the area to the right of the tree was those monster hostas to the left. I watched a video on how to move them — apparently they are pretty tough, so you don’t have to baby them, like say, tomato plants. But you would need superhuman strength, or at least super Sandy strength to wrestle those things from the ground and separate them. Good god, you’d need a chain saw. To the right of the tree where I did dig was primarily well-established weeds, which have been lounging around for several years having a grand old time getting their roots deep, and a couple of smaller hostas which I was able to wrestle out of the ground. But lordy, those weeds! They were like the Blanches of plants. I was hacking, digging, and dirt stabbing for 3 hours to get them all out. And a some of them were just weird. Two I pulled up had gross rubbery, tubelike roots, like some kind of reject from the prop department of a bad horror movie. My sister was curious about what they were, but I was deep in the hacking at that point and wasn’t really paying attention to the green plant part. I just threw them on the pile of other weeds, muttering, plants are weird and gross! They got shoved in the leaf back and sent off.
This past weekend, I put in a pepper plant, 2 cucumbers, 1 zucchini, oregano, and bush beans. Basil I’m starting from seed myself and tomatoes are coming next weekend, courtesy of my friend/master gardener Becky who grows them from seed. Sweet potatoes (guerilla and legit) will arrive in June.
I have been trying to focus on the process and not worry too much if the plants all succumb to plague, boils, or natural disasters. It’s all so new and green and pestilence-free right now, so I’m going with that. The Force is with me for now.
sandradeden.com 
Go, Sandy! Kudos for turning a long-forgotten landscape into a vibrant and functional one. (From this day forth, I shall now refer to that process as “Dedening.”)
Lol! Thanks Geo! And each occurrence may very well include scary rubbery rooted weeds, but those can always be thrown in the compost!
I thought poor Basil was looking seedy.
Looking good, garden fun, and root horror movie= yes.
Thank you! ☺️❤️
Great job. What are those things in the white plate?
They are stones and sand. It’s my attempt at something I was reading about, a bee/butterfly water station. The stones give them places to land and sip. We’ll see if it works. I should put a little sign, the Bee/Butterfly Bar is open! Ha ha!