Doin' Work

For the last three weeks Jeremy and I have been putting in many hours trying to get our yard into a semi presentable form. The place was a disaster area. For real. The back fence was completely overgrown with this crazy fence plant that everyone has here that is ugly and overwhelming. There were vines taking over the tree and side of the house. There were years and years and years worth of sticks and garbage throughout the yard. We thought it would be a fun little project to undertake, emphasis on the fun and the little. We were wrong about both.

I believe in my original post about the house when we moved in I showed pictures of the nasty back yard. It would be an okay yard for the most part except that it slants downward and then flattens off at the end towards the back fence for about a 4 foot wide strip of area that is completely covered in vines, aforementioned fence death plant, sticks and who knows what all else. It is just gross. And there are stumps of huge trees everywhere just hanging out being eye sores.

So anyway...we went to work trying to clean up the area so that we didn't want to vomit every time we looked out the window. And did we ever work. I knew it wasn't going to be easy but this was insane. The best approach was to just take the hatchet and start swinging away. We needed machetes to hack through the stuff. It was back breaking. Literally, it broke my back and I've been going to physical therapy. Okay that was I lie I hurt my back before we ever started this. But now that we are almost finished hacking away back there I think we have done a lot of good work. And by we, I mean 99% Jeremy and 1% me.

We have cleared out about 20 of those large yard bags to this point and I would guess by the time we are done with the front and sides it will be more like 30.

These are some of the larger sticks we have yet to chop up and dispose of.

This little area is about three feet by three feet.

And this is all of the garbage that came from this little spot. There were endless amounts of roots and rocks and nasty bug things I'd never seen before.

And finally, is there anything more attractive than a man after a few hours of manual labor in the baking sun? I have to admit, there is something about a guy sweating his guts out doing work in the backyard trying to make your house look better.