Eversmashing

Today was our big day of yard work!  Jon got to use his new lawn mower and I armed myself with my gloves and clippers and set to work on taming our jungle!

I'm kind of kicking myself that I didn't take more "before" pictures, because boy oh boy did we see a HUGE difference after we were done!  Ofcourse, it took over three hours, so it's a good thing you could tell it made a difference!

BEFORE-  This area on the side of our house was taken over by these viney plants.  They're okay visually speaking, but they made it nearly impossible to get into that corner to clear out the dead branches that had fallen from the trees there.

AFTER - Ta da!  Now it's ready to be used for strawberries, herbs, or whatever else I feel like planting back there!  No more jungle!

BEFORE - The corner of the house was pretty overrun by shrubbery.  Scary!

AFTER - Though the bush in the center still needs work, the others are trimmed back to a much more reasonable size.  Whew!

BEFORE- The northeast corner of our lot had a mysterious "clump" of treessurrounded by whatever random plants which were growing at knee-height between them.  What a disaster!

AFTER - I cut down all of the dead vines that I could reach, and Jon mowed down the "undergrowth" between the trees. 

BEFORE- The back of the garage was bordered by some lilies and vines that grew out about two feet over their wooden border.  Besides that, it was impossible to even see what was under the deck because of the vegetation growing along the edge.

AFTER -

Ahhhh... much better!

The opposite side was equally overgrown, but is now mown back nicely,and no longer has tree branches hanging down by the corner of the fence.

BEFORE - Our shed was overgrown as well, with liles pretty much blocking the entrance.  The back corner behind it was quite a jungle.

AFTER -

Hey, there's a path to our shed!  Oh, yeah, and our yard-clipping pile is quite large... heh.

Though it's still quite jungle-like behind the shed, it no longer has tree branches hanging down all around it, and the edges have been trimmed to the wooden borders.

BEFORE - The north side of the yard was overgrown as well, particularly in the corner.  Yikes!

AFTER -

The corner is sooo much more cleaned out now!  Now we just need to plant some more grass seed around there and clear out more of the dead branches.

Here's the view looking towards the garage... much neater after cutting back nearly two feet!

I trimmed back my "guard peonies" as well... now they won't attack everyone that tries to go through the gate.

Hey, we have some ferns!

One of my big projects was trying to de-tangle our grape vines from thefence/tree/other plants that were around it so that I could prune itand pull out the dead tree branches. 

This particular vine is monsterously huge!

I think we even have some sunflowers in here!

Oh, and here's a pic of our side yard... ahhhhh... neat and tidy!