An update on the yard

As anyone who talks to us knows, we are doing our best to keep up with our yard, but the weeds and yard are simply overtaking us. About 25% of our property is essentially wooded and it has been my goal to get it into a manageable piece of land before the leaves fall again. In places right now we have over 2 feet of leaves from last fall still piled up. I want to mulch them and let them decompose. When my mom visited a couple months ago, we borrowed her chainsaw and cut down a bunch of very small trees and unsafe limbs. Then Chris borrowed a weed wacker and cut down all the low weeds. The goal was to then mulch up all the leaves and clean up the sticks, but Chris started last week and I'm not sure he'll be willing to go back out there. After he was out there with the mower for about 10-15 minutes, he ran inside the house and pulled off his shirt saying, "Is something still on me?? I think I got bit!" Well, I looked down and there were yellow jackets all over his pants so he had to run back outside and try to swat them all off. He got stung three times and a couple of them were still stinging the next day. Thank goodness he isn't allergic.

Chris has also been making a homemade weed spray and killing some of the weeds that way, which has so far proven to be fairly effective. We're unsure of whether it will kill the grass, too, though so we are being cautious with it.

On a more successful note (since many people have asked), we did finally get that big dead tree from our front yard removed! We had a neighbor come take it down in pieces, and got a pretty good deal on it. We haven't done anything with the stump yet and haven't planted anything new, but we will do something eventually. I am thinking we'll deal with the stump this fall when it gets cooler outside and things settle down and then hopefully plant something next year. Anyway, it has all been much more work than we'd imagined, but we've learned new things and (for the most part) are enjoying the challenge. 

Tree from Katie Stratton on Vimeo.