Backyard Battle-Day 4 and Counting

Well, now that the snow has cleared, I thought it was time to start tackling the center area of the backyard jungle. 

Day 1-I started with taking out the forsythias beneath the trees. Then began work on trimming the "smaller" Christmas tree. I cut all the lower branches to open up the canopy. I figured if it was going to stay for awhile, I might as well make it look a little nice.

Day 2- I cleared the area around the second Christmas tree, and trimmed those branches. It looks really nice, BUT now we have a clear view of our neighbor's hot tub in the neighborhood behind us!! I hope the vegetation along the fenceline grows in. Delia said she doesn't want to see someone's "bathtub"! I can't say that I blame her. If it doesn't grow in, I have a solution-that's where the storage shed will go!!  

Day 3 & 4-I took out the juniper bushes on the west side. Even though I bought a new chain for the chainsaw, I actually haven't used it once so far. Turns out that the 55+ year old juniper bushes were already dying at the roots. I didn't know why before, but figured it out as I was working on them. There is quite a bit of this parasitic, viney groundcover everywhere. I'm sure it was nice at one point in time, but the stuff is horrific!!! It's killing the trees around the yard, and evidently the sturdy cockroach-like juniper bushes too!! I cut the vine on some of the trees, but I have to say that I'm glad it's killing the juniper bushes. I absolutely hate those juniper-type bushes. Hate is not a strong enough word to describe my feelings towards them. Loathe is a much better description.

I have a corner left to go, but the area is looking more open now. My goal is for the yard to look like a beautiful park with old trees.

However, what comes out must go somewhere. Which means that the bush pile is growing!!! Once I clear the last part of the yard and some thorny bushes, I'll have someone remove the brush pile.

The War Against the "Jungle"

LD/Delia - 2    Jungle - 0

Our first point was the cleanup of the vegetation outside of the bar windows (see October's blog post).  After that we got the bug to do more, we just needed the right time.

We had a "scorching" weekend (for the end of November that is).  With temperatures in the high 50's it was hard to pass up the temptation of tackling some of the overgrowth around our yard.  We have a dead tree near the master bedroom whose branch fell, and was leaning on the cable and phone line (which we are having problems with).  It had already lost one branch last week, and we feared that the big branch was going to fall as well.

Before

Before

Next to the tree we have a ton of Forsythias.  The overgrowth was so bad that the ATT technician commented that he was glad that the problem was the router and not the phone line.

Before-the air conditioner is in there somewhere!  The compost bin is barely peaking out.

Several months ago LD started to remove the Forsythias that wrapped around the east side to the front, but she was only able to remove the front bushes.  So we spent a couple of hours on Saturday and a couple of hours on Sunday cutting them down.  We managed to cut down over 85% of the "mass".  I think one more hour and we would have gotten them all done.

After-the compost bin looks like it is sticking out now!

After-oh look, we do have an air conditioner.

The bad news is that our brush pile keeps growing!  We once thought about having a bonfire, but it is so large that it might cause a forest fire!!  At some point in time we are going to have to haul it away.

Brush pile

We are also trying to find "green" ways to remove 2 very old, large Christmas trees.  The previous owner planted two Christmas trees about 40-50 years ago, and they are now 20-30 feet tall.  So we came up with the idea of giving them away to a city, community or organization.  They are free to anyone who is willing to cut them down and haul away.  We advertised them on Craigslist.  So if you know anyone who is interested in very large Christmas trees, let us know!

Tree #1

Tree #2

We have 1.25 acres, so this is only the beginning of our yard work!  It is going to be a long journey.