Not The "Big" Progress

It's not as visible as usual today. Yes, I was still out in the yard for my morning hour+, but you won't see fewer trees or anything else major or highly visible.

I blame Paul. I was prepared to  do the major jobs, at least the ones the right size for the loppers. Anything bigger requires the chain saw in my opinion, like the one Paul took to the way overgrown lilac hedge Saturday. You can even tell where his arms got more tired as he went. The height of the stumps left behind to sprout out again got lower as he went. Of course, I'm also going with insider knowledge, since he came inside and sat for a couple hours before returning to the hedge. But that kind of work is highly visible.

I don't know what he did with the loppers after cutting much of the downed lilac branches into firewood-sized chunks on Sunday. I also wasn't about to chase over the yard hunting them. That would have taken half the energy available. So I did other things. They aren't so spectacular.

I located more creeper vine in the yard and cut parts back. It'll keep growing, but that's another day's work. Right now it's somewhat curtailed. I cut down more scattered cup flowers. Short ones, not the ones already 6 feet tall and still climbing. They are popping up all over the yard, so it's walk over here, chop, carry with you over there, chop, etc. Then they get tossed into the old pond to decompose, along with their old dead square stems.

A whole mound of previously cut creeper vines, now thoroughly brown and thus finally dead, got relocated from just over the fence for the raspberry patch and into the former pond. If you hadn't seen the mound there, you'd never notice.

Previous pruning/chopping left small piles of brush scattered around. Most of those had lots of leafy stuff attached, something Paul wants in the pond rather than the wood pile. I get that. I was just too tired to do anything when I hit my wall those days, so they sat. I took two apart this morning, stripping off tender branches with leaves for the pond, putting woody branches in the bigger brush pile. Of course, that bigger pile already had a big mix of non-woody cup flower stalks - on the bottom, no less - that I had to strip out individually and haul over to the pond. So four piles became one of mostly brush - hey, I didn't strip ALL the leafy stuff out - and a higher level of stuff decomposing in the old pond.

Note to self: do NOT try to walk across that pond, not matter how much you want to trim the wigelia back and kill/remove the trees behind them scraping the house when the wind blows. It's a walking hazard. Let Paul do it.

Nothing more is dead today than when I started, at least nothing major. There was a bunch of grass pulled at the bottom of the stairs, along with creeping charley and dandelions. Enough got cleared that some deadly nightshade vines lost their hiding spots and got somewhat demolished. Some moss patches got cleared off the concrete steps now that sun can hit them and it's drying up. I still put my hour+ in, and the dog whining reminded me that I promised Steve not to overdo it this morning.

But like I said, nothing major happened out there. You can't look around and see progress like in previous days. Not unless you're part of that ant hive I disturbed at the bottom of the stairs when the rocks topping it got rearranged when creeping charlie roots lost their grips. At least they're not the biting kind. If I can't get positive acknowledgement, I at least want to avoid complaints.