Tough Neighborly Situation

So our neighbors, whose dog was attacked by a raccoon, have gone to the city to complain about our backyard being overgrown and a harbor for rodents and the city has fined us. There are blackberries growing along the fence mixed with invasively growing ferns. The city fined us without seeing it.

Um yea. Thanks. Hope your dog is ok. Glad we offered to help during the attack and after and were willing to put ourselves in danger.

This is the 3rd time they've had the city fine us for various yard related things. We are renters with a landlord who doesn't care about the property to do anything to help deal with the wildly unmanageable and fast growing invasive weeds in the front and the invasive ferns and blackberries in back. We don't want to put too much $ into this place but are expected to "maintain" it. How do you maintain weeds?

We've put mulch in the front to deal with the lack of lawn/weed patch but there is no match for the weed growth once the rain starts. It's mainly oxalis which looks like clover and you can't really mow it and it puts up flower stocks which do grow high enough to be considered by the city to be too tall. Trouble is if you mow it it looks even worse. And oxalis cannot be removed without removing like a foot deep of soil and its everywhere. Drop one little bulbette and you've still got them. There was only dirt there during the oxalis' dormant period (summer/fall) so I'd hope the mulch would be an improvement. Alas the neighbor still complains the landlord should put in a lawn. I don't think they have any idea the effort/$ involved in that.

We know we need to cut back the blackberries now that the season is over but need to retrieve the chainsaw from my parents. We were just discussing when we could do this a few days ago. But now it stings that someone is making us do it RIGHT NOW!

They must be blaming us for the raccoons and therefore the attack. There are no raccoons in the small blackberry thicket. Maybe a cat but no Raccoons. Sigh.

Before we moved in I told Eric I was concerned about maintaining the yard but he assured me it would be fine. Easy stuff. I don't think he banked on the effort kid care takes and having neighbors who care enough to call the city regularly. Also...Eric likes the weeds as opposed to bare dirt.
He now says....maybe a barren yard of grass would be easier to maintain. Sigh sigh sigh.