Yard Work a.k.a. Blister Heaven

We worked really hard today. Since I am home and have the time, I've been trying to tame the wilderness that is my parents' yard. They live in a half-acre in Dwight but they both work in Lincoln. They are gone from 7AM to 6PM. They just don't have the time to maintain all the wonderful plants they have. Because of that, everything gets rather over grown.

To make the lawn easier to maintain, I have been working on pulling out weeds, trimming the over-grown bushes, tilling up roots, leveling the soil, laying down landscaping material and putting mulch on top. In the long run this should make it much easier for my parents to maintain each year. I hope I'm right!

Today the kiddos and I went after a big section with severely overgrown plants and lots of weeds. (That's the first three pictures here.) There are several volunteer trees in this section, bushes that should be about 2 feet high overgrown to 4 feet high and tangle weed. Ugh, ugh, ugh!

The kids and I pulled, tugged, clipped, snipped, shoveled and hoed the 15 foot (approximately) section all morning. We were interrupted about 10:30 by the rain but it stopped about 11AM so we went back out. I took 8 wheelbarrows full back to the brush pile. When I say full, I mean piled up as high as will stay on and stuffed down to fit even more. Let's just say we moved a lot of sticks, branches and decomposing leaves from last fall.

The section still looks pretty sorry. The big purple tree on the left butchered. I need to cut the big sticks but they were too big for hand shears. I ran out of steam so I didn't chain saw them down. The tree did a major offshoot behind itself and we'll have to pull out the root stump with the truck.

In the upper right hand quarter of the picture you can see the big volunteer tree with 2 main stems. That puppy isn't going to be fun to remove. I think it should go (sigh) simply because this section of yard really isn't big enough to support a full grown tree. It's roots will damage the sidewalk and the retaining wall in the back if we let it mature.

Under the big tree are what is left of the big bushes with light purple flowers you can see in the second picture. There were actually 6 seperate bushes in the overgrown jungle. I am going to try to talk my mom into moving a few to make laying the landscaping material easier. I also think it will look nicer if they are strategically placed in a row instead of randomly bunched together.

By my count, there are 5 tree stumps that need to be removed. Do you think I can convince the guys to get out the straps and truck to pull them out tonight? I sure hope so. I would like to till, lay the landscaping material and mulch tomorrow. I don't want to give the weeds time to gain a foothold again!

P.S. Yes, I have a big blister on my left hand that popped. Owie!