From the junglllle! To a yard!

I've heard that gardening is peaceful and relaxing for some people. I don't think I'm one of those people.
 
In last week's post, I mentioned that we're getting a new Roommate and said new Roommate comes with a dog, a mini-schnauzer mix named Rosie. In light of this development, The Current Roomate and I assessed various parts of the house and decided that the state of the yard as it sat was potentially hazardous to Rosie.
 
Why, you might ask? It was so far overgrown, we couldn't see about half of it to know if there were any holes in the fence or small animal families that might pose a threat to a little (well, small/medium) dog.
 
When I say overgrown, I'm not exaggerating. Far from it. Here are the before pictures:


 

 

 

The back door to the basement

 

Back wall fence - that you can't see (it's about 6 ft tall!)

 

Corner of the back yard

 

Shared fence with the neighbors (that's their garage in the background)


 As you can see, not exaggerating.

Naturally, the Roommate and I decided to stay in on Friday so that we could go to bed early and get up around 9 and get to work. That is, until some friends were over until 2ish and we got a little distracted.

I was still up at about 9:30 (huzzah!... minus the wake up) with my coffee keeping me company in the back yard. I got to work pulling the easy-ish weeds by the house and the gate so that the door could close. 2 hours later, here's the progress I left for a couple of hours so that I could head to the gym.

The back of the house by the basement door

 

A gate no longer held open by weeds!

 

As my trainer said, it was kind of like a 2-a-day gym session... except more like 3 or 4-a-day.

When I got back home around 1:30, the Roommate (who surprised me with a clean kitchen!) and I got back to work clearing the yard. We used shears to cut the incredibly invasive grapevine that was threaded alllllll the way through all of the fencing, cherry tree and other plants and pulled it down. In the process, we lost some of the plants we'd planned to keep. Our guesstimate is that it took us about 3 hours total to remove the grapevine since there was more every time we turned around.

The things that were just too stubborn to pull, like the clover and super overgrown grasses, got weed-eatered with a powerful weed eater borrowed from my friend "Witt" and her boyfriend Brian.

At about 6 or 6:30, we took a water break. It might seem like an odd time for a break but this is what we left in the yard - it's about 3 feet tall and 7 or so across:

 
 

After our water break, we decided that it was time to bag it up so it wouldn't get soggy or seem like a good place for small creatures to live overnight. The bagging took us about an hour - we were admittedly a bit slower on bags 3-7 than at the beginning and end of the process.

At the end, we got everything into 10 packed bags around 7:30. I think my glee is rather evident here.

 

That turned out to be the perfect time for our friend, Todd, to arrive and fix the fence so it could actually swing freely. The Roommate and I got cleaned up for dinner while he added a support beam to the gate:

And here's the final product:

 

The back door to the basement - that you can actually walk to!

  

The pretty and grapevine-free cherry tree

 

The same back wall of fencing!

 

We found about 4 small but established trees, lots of random pavers and a few animal burrows we didn't know were there and managed to save a couple of hostas, lilies, daisy-like flowers, a raspberry plant or two (there was one raspberry, The Roommate and I split it and it was delicious) and the cherry tree.

All in all, not a bad day's work and for a grand total of about $40 for a new claw cultivator and yard bags! There's still a little cleanup to be done but I can't wait to replant a little bit and use the yard at our eventual housewarming party - stay tuned!


*Awesome tip if you're clearing your yard soon: We found that these gloves allowed us to use the touchscreens on our phones even with them on. Not bad for $1/pair!