bye bye arborvitae

Yesterday was finally our first true day of yard work for the season, and it felt so good to get out there again. I've done a little bit of pruning and picking up here and there, but by this time last year, we had already been working in the yard for weeks. We'd cleared out a whole lotta pine needles & debris, moved rocks, dug trenches, laid irrigation pipe, and installed the valve box for our sprinkler system. Makes me feel like we've gotten off to a late start this year.

Our goal yesterday was to finish cutting down the way too overgrown arborvitae and rid of all of it's mess.

I couldn't find a more recent picture of the "Green Monster II"...this was taken last year when we were getting ready to build our raised garden beds, but it gives a good idea of how big it is (notice how much taller than the fence it is, you can imagine how much it's spilling over the back side of the fence...the neighbor loves that!)

A few weeks back, when it was still a little too cold for me to go out and haul brush, but before little birdies moved in for the spring, I encouraged Cory to go out and at least get the bulk of it cut down.

I kept him motivated by taking pictures and baking cookies.

He's doing good work, and if you look closely it looks like he's taking a smoke break!
I thought this picture was hilarious when I got it off the camera...really it's just a branch in the background.

Then he hauled 3 dump trailer loads away to the yard debris compost center.

A few comments about this photo:
1. I don't know what we would do without a good friend with a dump trailer.
2. That pile of rock behind the trailer is just one of many piles still piled around the yard. I can't believe how many rocks we have!
3. The tarp is off the wood pile because we burned through all of it keeping ourselves warm this winter.
4. We finally got a new TV antenna, and it looks soo much better than our old one that used to reach into the sky.
5. That tree in the upper left corner - people call them "trees of heaven," I call them "trees from hell"...because they are!

Then we were left with "bushes" and lot of open space.


Yesterday we cut (well, Cory cut-) the rest of the bushes, hauled two truckloads to the compost center, loaded a third to be taken on Monday, and raked up years and years worth of debris. It was amazing to find some of the stuff hiding under there.

You can see how much garden space we gained...that big blue drum is our compost bin, and just to the right of it is the corner of a raised bed that the Green Monster II grew almost all the way to. In the next couple of weeks, we'll rototill the soil and get it ready for planting...probably rhubarb, zucchini, pumpkins, acorn squash, pole beans, and some corn (the rest will be in the raised beds).

In true spend the day working in the yard until the sun goes down and we should head inside because it's getting dark and cold form, we got everything put away, cleaned up, and we were just in time for the EZ's "after eight" special.

Today we are planting non-veggie garden stuff...peonies, hosta, lily of the valley, and some other perennials that I hope will fill the flower beds on the back side of the house. Also, a trip to Lowe's, no weekend seems to be complete without one.