How we weed the front slope

Early on, we tried keeping the portion of our property directly in front of the house weeded by climbing up the slope, but with the Weeping Love Grass providing a nice slick surface and not much to stop us, we'd soon be slipping and sliding, or even tumbling downhill. And then there was the time Norris was attacked by yellow jackets. We have since found a system that helps us to do the work.

Norris does a lot of the ladder wrangling from the lower end, and in several places as we work our way across, we need someone standing on it at the bottom for stability. Norris winds up with that job,  leaving Cheryl to do the climbing, digging and pulling - and occasionally helping to move the ladder from the top end when there's a good place to balance.

At the point pictured above, we're both getting hot and tired.  We have to do this early in the season - later on the yellow jackets will get aggressively territorial.  This link will take you to our story of one battle with them, in August, 2009. We have not had to do that since.