Jersey - love the photos. Very peaceful. Kudos to you for playing hooky. I used to take a week of my vacation on the end of May just to garden and plant stuff. I'm not plagued with a ton of weeds in my backyard garden except for chickweed and a couple of other annual things unless the birds drop poison ivy seeds. My wilder lower garden is another story but I tend to let it go wild to a certain degree.
I do mainly the dark Heucheras - more success. I do have 'Southern Comfort' which seems to do okay.
I used to mulch with hard wood mini nuggets but 40 bags doesn't even cover half of the garden. DH used to buy it for me for Mother's Day. Now I use shredded leaves almost exclusively. I did a couple of bags of mulch around the edges of the front beds but that was all for show.
