What I Made is Week

A mess.  That’s what I made this week.  I cooked nothing; luckily my husband cooks, often, so we didn’t starve or anything.  And I did try some of the Frozen Paleo Crock Pot meals.  I’ll add updates to that post on how they were.

But on to the mess I made. I made a mess in order to destroy a bigger mess:

I love that picture because it really captures the chaos that is going on in that part of the yard. I should probably go back in time a bit and describe what we got for a yard when we bought the house.  It’s almost a half an acre and the house sits almost right in the middle of that.  The front yard is bigger than the back, but not in usable space.  In the front yard there are 30, yes 30, giant pine trees.  The yard slopes down to the street and that space from where the pine trees start down to where the yard meets the street is a constant mess.  When we first found out the house was for sale, I couldn’t picture in my mind what house it was and I grew up literally around the corner from it.  For years and years the front of the house was obscured by the overgrowth in that area beneath the pine trees.  We’ve spent a lot of time knocking almost all of that down.  But the rest of the yard was almost equally neglected and continued to be while we took care of other more pressing issues.

This weekend, I decided to tackle some of the side yard. It’s been taken over by a forsythia bush and these rude, nasty thorns that  were really mean to me.  Like, really.

See those nasty things?  They hurt.  And there were tons of them.  Also, I started this project last fall and quit because I either got overwhelmed or it got too cold and guess what?  The ones I had cut down re-rooted themselves into the ground from BOTH ENDS! So I had to cut the thorns down in two places.  It was completely frustrating.  But I certainly learned a thing or two.  Here are my tips for getting rid of thorns and other forms of pesky brush:

1.  Dress appropriately – You need long pants, long sleeves and gloves. You might even want some eye protection because these things seriously start to take on a life of their own.  They will spring up and stab you in the head and when you turn your back on them, they will afix themselves to your clothes and you will have to call your husband or some other kind stranger to detach you from their nasty claws.

2.  Have the proper tools – You will need some type of sharp tool to snip these things.  I actually used my trusty  bow saw that looks something like this, except about 50 years older:

But, you could use one of these, too.  I have in the past and would have today if I could have found the thing:

3.  Start pruning on one end of your mess and carefully make your way front to back so that you are mostly keeping the thorns and brush in front of you at all times because, seriously, you will get caught up in these suckers.  I mean, you’re not really going to get trapped in there or anything, but you want to avoid getting shredded if you can.  Clip those puppies as close to the ground as possible.    Be careful when you are tossing them into a pile.  This seemed to be the time when the thorns got most angry and would start wrapping themselves around me.

4.  You’re going to need to dispose of these things in a manner that will not allow them to regrow in your yard.  The plan for mine is to have our local landscape guy dispose of the gigantic pile that is growing in our yard.  I could also bundle them up and bring them to our yard waste landfill, but I have so much that needs to be hauled away that I don’t think I could really tackle it myself.  However you choose to dispose of them, do it fast so that they do not re-root themselves in the pile.

5.  You hopefully have a cleared out spot by now, but remember, you did not pull that stuff out by the roots, so if you don’t do something to prevent that from happening,  they are going to all start growing back. You can use some chemical-y stuff like Round Up Brush Killer to kill the roots.  I’ve also read that boiling water can kill the roots as well and I would like to try that first to avoid the chemicals, but I’m skeptical.  I’ve never tried it before, but I think it’s worth a shot.  I’ll keep a close eye on it and report back with the results.

Here’s what I ended up with after my afternoon of thorn murder:

And, to motivate me to continue the work, here is what I dream this will look like this summer:

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