I learned a very valuable lesson with my vinca project - we ended up killing (or so I thought) everything on the slope with Roundup, waited a couple of weeks to make sure nothing green came back, then planted the vinca and mulched lightly. The vinca has done very well, but unfortunately crabgrass has engulfed the entire slope. The vinca is doing just fine underneath, but pulling out the crabgrass is an enormous hassle. I have reclaimed about 3/4 of the slope bit by bit but I have now given up and am just waiting for a frost to kill off the rest of the crabgrass. I will have to put down Preen in the spring for sure. I absolutely should have put down a layer of newspaper/cardboard in addition to the mulch. Furthermore, the Roundup application didn't kill deeply rooted things like docks and dandelions, so I have been pulling those out by hand, along with a few other pesky things like clover. I have a feeling this slope is going to be a huge weeding nightmare for at least another year, but the vinca is filling in much faster than I expected, so we shall see.

I'm in the 'apply the leaves when they are available' category. Since most of the leaves are in the backyard, they are only applied to the backyard beds - which are woodland-type beds so the plants are happy with the leaves (and pine needles). Most of the leaves are from the white ash so are relatively small. They get raked straight into the beds without being chopped first. The other main backyard tree is a red oak. About 30% of those leaves hang on the tree until early March. Those ones, when they fall, collect in the south alley and along the south fence so get vacuumed up, shredded, and dumped on beds in the spring. When/if we lose the ash, there will just be pine needles and oak leaves to deal with. I doubt that will change how we deal with them. In the front garden there is not a significant leaf-fall and we don't bother mulching there. We do leave a lot of the current year's folage to die back naturally and feed the soil. Other than that, the front garden survives just fine without mulching with anything. All the leaves in this picture were added to the beds by the end of October..

My reasons for having a grid have nothing to do with scratches. I grew up with unprotected furniture and I have the same attitude toward my sink :) I prefer the function of the sink with a grid. I can drain a pot into the sink without affecting anything sitting in the sink since the water runs underneath. I can drain pasta or veggies in a colander and the water goes straight down instead of around the colander. I do sometimes peel items over the grid and removing the peels from the grid with my faucet sprayer is quite easy if I do it right away. The peels tend stick more if they dry out a little but they're still not difficult to remove with a sink brush or scrubbie. I don't use the grid in our prep sink even though I purchased one for it. I'm not as likely to put a colander down on the bottom of the prep sink now that I've gotten used to the grid in the other sink. I've somehow gotten the idea that the sink is one of the germier places in the kitchen and the idea of water flowing around the sink and getting into my food isn't a pleasant one. I don't like using the grid as a dishdrainer for this same reason. It took me a while to realize the benefits of the grid. I took them out of both sinks after a month and put them away for a year before giving them another try. The one in the main sink has now remained for 3+ years. If I had just one sink I'd still use the grid. Our grid is too large for the dw. I clean it with a plastic scrubby or dish cloth every few days. The underside tends to get grubbier than the top.

We picked up the tree today and wow was that interesting getting it prepared for the drive. They wrapped it in two queen size sheets to prevent it from burning or losing too many leaves. This tree is way bigger than I realized which is a good thing but it makes planting more challenging. We didn't get it in the ground today because we had to widen the hole a good bit. The root ball/cube is 24x24x24 and so our hole is 48" wide. I hope that's enough because this was a lot of digging. The tree will be just over ten feet once it is planted. Sometimes I wonder if this is too big of a job for just two people but we're making progress. Here is a picture (my husband wanted to be blurred out LOL). For size reference he is just over 6 feet tall. Did I mention that I love this tree?