Thank you but , hopefully, it will be lovelier in a month or so. Later I will post pictures of the 12+ birdhouses on my property and in our labyrinth.

@JackPedigo I’ll look forward to your post!!

Instead of a hoe I use my hände and a hore hore. Yes it could be a 'comfortable' approach except it is grass pollen time which, for me, does not make for a lot of comfort. It's almost like when I see all the grass with their seed heads my eyes start to run.

@JackPedigo yeah i go through 4 seasons of allergies also. Last 3 days in afternoon hitting pretty hard. Phlegm flow matches the Mississippi River. Lol ugh had to increase hydroxapine(sp?) I always have several antihistamines readily available. Lol

@HerbertNewsam I discovered Quercitin. It seems to work very well. There is also dried Nettle pills which also work well. I get funny looks from others as I am wearing my mask when no one is around. It's not the virus I am supressing but the pollen.

@JackPedigo i get the hydroxazine from the VA and it does pretty good, my problem i go to long then take it a bit on the late side. Lol..
The script is for ptsd to help me get to sleep with a couple of other things.
But it is my cannabis edibles that keep me asleep...
The pills wear off by 2 or 3 oclock am without the cannabis. Stuff works

Unfortunately, the pathways did not start out as grass (there is enough of that already). The area is a terminal moraine. It was once on the edge of a glacier so the top soil is ground rock (sand) and polished rocks. I shifted the rocks to line my outdoor shower and another pathway. Then laid cardboard and garden cloth over the beds and topped them with sand. Remember, we can't fool nature and now she has put grass where I once had a nice neat sandy walkway. Luckily the soil is shallow so it's easy to pull everything (but after several years I'm tired of doing this and just go over the area with a weed whacker).

I started in 2012 and a landscape designer friend drew up a plan. It was quite extensive with a windmill palm in the center. These tress do grow here but if their in the open the wind can really bang them up. We changed the plan, moved a propane tank (in the far lower right) and added another path across the top which goes to an area outside the plan to the right. Next I spent two years digging and sifting before starting to plant. I wanted mostly grasses, sedges and plants as a Barberi shrub and some Yuccas. The large central portion got stopped when my partner died, 4 years ago. All I can do now is try to keep up. Did you see the pictures of the labyrinth where I spend a lot of time?

@JackPedigo No I don't remember seeing it. Can you link me?

@JackPedigo back when I was mowing my pathways there was grass but far more weeds. When I got tired of that i started replacing pathways with tamped pulverized granite. They're actually getting a little thin in places but I think when I refresh them I may get some help with it to get better compaction. (My wrists wouldn't appreciate doing the tamping again.)

@MarkWD I don't know about the climate in you part of Calif. but here it is wet in the winter. Right now we are experiencing what we call Junurary. The grass goes dormant during the late summer but thrives the rest of the year. A path I lined with cardboard, garden cloth and rocks is also getting grass and other weeds but not as fast as the sandy paths. My biggest problem is that these beds are only a small part of my gardens. The front yard is a much larger space.
Here are the pictures of the labyrinth. It was started around 2006 and a few years afterward an aerial photo was made to get an idea of it's plan. I talked to a person yesterday and asked her to get someone with a drone to take a more recent photo as the area has expanded a lot. The next 3 were taken in April and the rest just recently