Another neglected garden bed

Here's another garden bed that I've let get way out of hand. It's got a few plants that I want to keep, but some that need to go.

I know it's hard to tell, but there are a few weeds in there too. Did you notice? Maybe you just blocked them out as I've been doing for a couple of months. They're not going away on their own, so let's get to work!

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This series of three photos (including the one above) covers the bed, moving from left to right.

That's just a mess! Would you believe there is a walkway in that last photo? The first thing I'll do with areas like this that are really overgrown with weeds is pull out all of them from the edge of the bed:

I want the outline of the bed defined so I can better see what's going on.

Once this is done, I can work on clearing out the rest of the weeds. In this case there are violets and grass growing right at the base of the Agastache rupestris, and they're really tough to get out.

There is also what at first appears to be poison ivy, but I think it's just a box elder sapling. I'm hoping it is because I just yanked it out with my bare hands!

Here's a view from the other side of this bed:

It looks as bad or worse than the first side! There is some russian sage in here that I'm going to pull out. I love this plant, but this specific one is weak. It flops over easily, and doesn't produce nearly as many branches (and therefore flowers) as it did a few years ago. There are some purple coneflowers here too -- I removed a few of them last week, but I'm leaving these here for now as I don't have anywhere else to put them right now.

I've defined this edge of the bed too. After several more minutes of pulling weeds and grass, I have a nice clean bed:

I used my flat-bladed spade and cut a new border on this side too.

Here's the first side all cleared out:

There's the missing walkway -- at least the first half of it! It looks like some of the stones got buried or moved. I'll have to work on this later this summer.

I'm not sure if I'll mulch this bed or leave it bare. I'll probably leave it bare for a little while until I decide what to do with the coneflowers. Maybe I'll just leave them there and hope the deer don't eat them all. Now that they're so visible and accessible I have a feeling they'll be chomped soon though.

I've mentioned before that I really do enjoy weeding, and this session has left me feeling pretty good! It's nice to take an overgrown area and make it presentable again, even if it just contains a few plants surrounded by clear soil. At least you can see the plants now, right?