That sounds like relatively low light to me, so I think pachysandra will thrive there. Around here (coastal CT) the common ground covers for shady areas are pachysandra, lily of the valley, and english ivy. Depending on who you talk to, these are either the perfect ground covers for problem areas, or invasive foreign plants that must be annihilated at all costs, with napalm if necessary, for the greater good. ;-) I personally think they all work very well as ground covers when planted in the right locations, at least around here. Anyway, not knowing where exactly you are located but seeing that you are in zone six, I imagine that any of these will work for you as well, so long as your soil is not alkaline. But even then, these plants are hardy. Still, probably the best idea would be to go to a local garden center and ask what is the best groundcover plant in your area. They will know better than me for sure. Tell them your situation and I'm sure you will get some excellent recommendations. Planting aggressive plants like these is easy given the right light and soil conditions; they will soon spread and take over everthing in the target area so long as you keep them alive long enough to establish good roots. Then your only concern will be cutting them back every year or so so that they do not invade your lawn. Not as hard as it sounds, especially for such a small area, but still necessary. Think of it like this: the properties of these plants that let them smother all other vegetation (weeds) and create a pleasing, uniform appearance are just as strong when they come into contact with your desirable lawngrasses. So where those plants meet your lawn, you will just have to cut them away now and then. Again, for an area as small as you describe this really isn't hard. Maybe even just a one beer job, twice a season. ;-) Oh, and I think I spelled the name of that synthetic herbicide wrong yet again, it is "glyphosate," and it is the herbicide contained in "pure" Round-Up. Most formulations of Round-Up contain other active ingredients as well, mostly to make it seem to work faster (glyphosate takes a week or so). All of the season-long herbicides do for sure. But of all of these synthetic formulations, it seems to me that a non-selective herbicide containing only glyphosate is the safest. But that is not to say you shouldn't try the weedwhacking-the-hell-out-of-it approach first: with aggressive plants like those I mentioned I think this would probably work just fine. Sorry to go on and on, hope that helps, Paul

My fault!!! Sorry, esp to john.com. I clicked to the link, immediately got huge hard drive activity, Explorer locked up, and was unable to quit out of the webpage. I assumed the worst, killed my computer and restarted, and IE crashed again. At this point I assumed the worst and decided to raise an alert. john--sorry for wrongly accusing you. Mea culpa, I'm just so paranoid these days on the web that I jump the gun.

AVG seems to have shot themselves in the foot this time. Progress means updates of course. I upgraded to AVG8 and somewhere around that time minor troubles started. For a few weeks things were not right and I was unable to pinpoint the cause. I remove a few programs and brought a few back and tried a few others, one that is no longer on my computer is AVG. Not suggesting they are the cause but with the 'adjustments' I have made my issues seem to be resolved. No doubt I will return to AVG somewhere down the road but for now I am quite happy without it.

that link scanner has been a big problem in AVG at various times, I would try doing as one person suggested and disable that link scanner from AVG and see if that works. AVG in their FAQ in fact tells how to install AVG with out the link scanner since it causes so many problems. Frequently Asked Questions this is the reply I am referring to by ripling "I tracked my particular problem to AVG 9 , specifically the AVG Active Surf-Shield in their LinkScanner, I unticked that & all has been fine since apart from not having that particular component of AVG available to use." Of course you can always try reverting back to an earlier version of Firefox which it seems many there have done and it seems to go back to normal. do you have the no script add on in your firefox by chance? I see in some threads there may be an issue with it causing a similar problem, however the most recent update of no script supposedly fixes it. from over on BBR I found this comment "tool>options>security uncheck block reported attack sites and block reported web forgeries. restart firefox and see if that helps" There is a new release candidate of firefox that you can give a try if you want to do that, see if it makes any difference new Firefox! seems to be a problem many are trying to find a cure for and none I have seen is the end all be all fix, some things work for some not for others. Those are so difficult to dig out the root cause.