Yard work and play

Last weekend, we did some yard work. My spouse cut down a tree (a locust tree of some sort, with thorns on the young growth) and I did some weed-eating (I helped a little with the tree).

The reason for the tree cutting was that it propagates itself throughout the yard creating little thorny thickets where we someday would like to have a lawn. We even thought it was dead last winter! A lot of the lower branches were dead, and it was growing out of a big pile (of god knows what).

We decided it might be best to tie off the tree so that it didn’t fall directly towards the house. Call us funny, but falling trees make us nervous. I climbed up and tried a rope as high in the tree as I could.

Then I tied the rope to one of the cedars on the other side of the yard. My spouse then proceeded to use the chainsaw. She had her safety glasses on and earplugs in. She remarked later that she didn't think she'd ever use her Forest Service experience again (meaning: use a chainsaw)! Little did she know!

We both saw it try to fall the other direction! Since we were both watching, we successfully redirected it (she pushed on the tree, I pulled on the rope).

With the tree on the ground, she proceeded to cut it up into smaller pieces.

Before and After

Our neighbor has been asking us to tame the weeds that grow on the border between his property (driveway) and our property (driveway). We didn’t get around to it, so he did it. He said he didn’t mind, but we think he did (a little, at least). He only did two-thirds of the driveway since he didn’t want to kick up rocks into our trucks. He and his family were out of town this last weekend. I wanted to show him that we take our neighborly weeds seriously and did some weed-eating. I did the rest of the driveway as well as the south end of the yard (where the drain field is).

While weed-eating, I found mole-signs (small mounds of freshly dug dirt). I dug into one and found a hole. We have a mole (or some other kind of varmint). Don’t know what to do about it. May have to poison or scare it away somehow. We suspect it will eat whatever vegetable garden we plant next year.

We also found a huge wasp/hornet nest under one of our eaves. These are different from the ones trying to live in our walls. We think we’ve gotten rid of those (poison) since there are no more wasp/bee-creatures flying around in our breakfast nook. We are thinking about ways to transport the nest over to the “friendly” front lot house folks. We’re sure that wasp-nests make great house warming gifts.