Clearing the land.....Part 2

It is nice to have a brother in law that has access to machinery. He borrowed a small excavator from his boss to help clear the back "jungle".

This is what it looked like before we started in the back:

I was standing on the back deck. All sorts of vines and trees that had fallen during a wind storm in January. All this came right up to the house. There was maybe a two foot space, but that was slowly being taken over.

Another view of the over grown backyard jungle. Hidden in all this mess is three or so large dog crates, what looks like a chicken coop and other random crap. Our neighbor told us that the people who were here before had a puppy mill going on.

Backside view. Our house is to the left in the picture. So many thorny vines and forsythia. I hate forsythia. It takes over if you don't take care of it.

Let the games begin! Brother in law was scraping away all the vines and other jungle stuff. Hubby was cutting up the tree that fell down so his brother could move it with the excavator.

This was the spot that we were thinking the access door to the septic tank was at. He had to dig it out. The darn thing had not been emptied in almost 10 years! We called a septic company to come the next day and take care of it.

The hubby spent the day cutting down trees and cutting them up into manageable pieces. We gave the wood to a friend of ours. Nothing went to waste. All the brush and vines and crap we brought to our neighbor across the street. He has a huge fire every Friday night, so he was okay with us adding to it.

It's getting there! The trees to the right are covered in poison ivy vines. A neighbor down the street said he will cut them down for us in exchange for the wood. He has beef cows, so I asked him for some manure as well. Works for me. He gets wood to sell and I get poop to make the bad soil here better.

This was 8 hours of work. We still had little saplings and vines to remove, but the big stuff was gone. Well, in that huge pile in the upper middle of the picture. Look, you can even see the septic door too! So sad when that has me excited.

We have so much more work to do. Removing all this jungle revealed a ton of broken glass, beer cans and shotgun shells. Our neighbor said that the people before us would sit out back drinking beer and when they finished, they would toss the bottle in the air and shoot it. Now we have the joy of cleaning up after them.

It's funny seeing everything getting green now. I figured that nothing would grow where we cleared, but we have a bunch of wild violets and strawberries growing there. The plan is to make this cleared spot (and more of what we didn't get to) our garden. It won't be this year, so hoping it will be next year. I miss playing in and planning my garden.