Yard Work!

Since our home in Hawaii has mostly concrete and gravel for lawn and garden, Art and I haven't had much gardening time in the last three years.

Our daughter, Tiffany had a list of things she wanted her father to take care of while we were here in Illinois.  One big thing on the list was to help clear out a lot of Buckthorn and other assorted bushes that we allowed to grow while Art and I lived here.  Our feeling was...If it's green and can survive the flooding and lack of sunlight in the back, it can stay.   I guess it wasn't the wisest thing we did, but sigh..

The problem now was Tif didn't know you did have to trim things back.  It had gotten horribly overgrown with Buckthorn and wild grape vines.  The grape vines or maybe they're Kudzu (for all I know) are extremely tenacious and seem to grow a foot a day.  They choke out everything else.  I've tried making them into wreaths and Art used it for rope, but finally gave up.  We had to just keep pulling them down and cutting them.  This photo was actually taken after many of the vines were already pulled down.  The honeysuckle bushes in front of our neighbor's fencing died from lack of sunlight. 

Luckily Illinois has had a string of wonderfully warm and sunny days.  This might be an Indian Summer. 

We worked for three days digging up bushes, cutting branches and transplanting hostas.  Wow!

Here's a photo of Art finally finding the stump that was the mother of all the wild grape vines.

Tiffany and I helped to dig, saw, and bundle branches.  It seemed never ending at first.  There was just so much to remove.  This large shady area had become a mosquito metropolis so that Tif and her family couldn't even enjoy the backyard.  We've discovered that KC is allergic to the bites because she develops horrible welts when she's bitten.  She may have inherited that from me and her mom.

There was so much landscape refuse that we hope the garbage truck will accept it all next week.

Art got a lot of exercise digging up the root ball of the rather tall Buckthorn trees.

I kept wishing we'd taken care of these invasive shrubs and trees when they were smaller.  There are more, but they're on our neighbor's property.  Perhaps we can help her remove them someday, but it's too exhausting for this year.

Many of the trees had grown so tall that they were pushing against the telephone and electricity wires.  The dark shade they cast also prevented the water (where we get lots of flooding) from evaporating more quickly in spring.

There's more sunshine coming through now and KC will have more room to play in.  I hope it will help the mosquito problem.  Gosh!  When I look at the first and compare it to this last one, you can hardly tell how much work we did.  I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.

I'm ready to sleep now!