May 8th – Sunday. 2nd beautiful, sunny day with wonderful temperatures so we decided it was time to tackle the yard, well a part of it anyway.
When I was young, we would often sit on the porch at night with Grandmommy, and sometimes Granddaddy, after an early dinner and watch the evening envelope the yard. We could see out toward Mt. Gilead past the horse ring and over the hill. So I was a bit surprised when we visited the farm last year to see there were enormous box hedges — 12 feet tall — growing right in the center of the view.
There are four bushes which we suspect may have self-propagated from one planting on the side of the yard. One was badly overrun with poison ivy and other vines and another infected with some less itchy variety, albeit no less invasive. Fortunately, we decided the poison ivy hedge needed to come down completely which we succeeded in doing in a couple hours. During the last of that effort — when Jim was attacking the core with the chainsaw — I started on the other, gaining a great deal of satisfaction from pulling the long vines from the top where they were sprouting leaves that would eventually destroy the bush.
After three hours, we decided we could claim victory both on restoring the view and also protecting the one hedge we feel confident we will be keeping. We’ll trim them all down once we figure out how to do that and may even remove one more.
It’s a pretty view and we are glad it is back. For reference, thought we would share the “before picture” complete with morning fog from Friday.
Still so much more to do but I feel good about making progress.