side garden

There's a jungle by my house.

The fact that they sit in shade most of the day has not deterred those hundreds of weeds from lacing their leaves and stalks together to form a jungle in the side garden. And the lengths that those suckers have put down roots! I don't know why... it's so moist over there that I would think everything could have the most shallow root system ever. They must have known I was coming and dug down deep.

The goal was to get that whole area cleaned up yesterday, and I admit that I felt short and only weeded the left side - I suppose that's why the weekend has two days. I made the mistake of taking a break from weed pulling to go use the weed-eater around the fence and between my raised beds. My allergies are finicky and only rears its ugly head on certain occasions. This happened to be one of them. I managed to finish that first half before giving in to the drainage and scratchy throat and retreating to the television the rest of the afternoon (evil, evil television).

There's a long to-do list already filled for today, so I hope I get to that other side... I still have no idea what I'm going to put there. There's intense light late in the afternoon, but during the rest of the day that area is really shaded. The plan for now is to weed, turn the soil by shovel, and then put down black/gray landscaping cloth. I've got a couple of bags of bark to spread around later, but I'm still not entirely sure I'll use bark in this spot.

Any suggestions for a shady, jungle-prone garden?