That yard post I keep talking about

I know I know, I'm a terrible blogger. It's been a whole week since my last post! But I went on my trip and then there's been some life-crap going on, which I won't bore you with here. But at long last here is the yard post I know you've been eagerly awaiting...

Last week I decided enough was enough. I had to make a tactical strike on our yard. Lucky for me, my friend Sanjeev had nothing better to do, so he came and helped! First we started just yanking weeds on the front and side of the house. The weeds have been nothing less then vicious this year thanks to all that rain. So they were monstrous. Of course I forgot to take a 'before' picture, so you'll just have to believe me that it looked even worse then this:

Yes those red dots are the evil eyes I'm sure were in there when we started. We also had to pull out 3 massive rosebushes. While they still bloomed nicely, they had been neglected for so long that they were breaking! They had years of random growth and they couldn't hold themselves up anymore. We also pulled tons of grass and other weeds that were crammed into the tiny space. Then it looked like this:

Wow, it can breathe! Although, I think I'm going to move a couple of the shrubs on the left. You can't see them all, but there are 4 crammed in there! There's one of whatever-these-are along the side fence in the back all alone by itself, so I'll probably put them there.

In the back corner there you can see the electric meter, and it's case is missing. That's because Sanjeev knocked it off, and we left it there. We left it there because it was full of HORNETS! Huge ones! After they had dissipated I snuck back over and got a picture of the empty nest:

I was surprised it was so small since the bugs that came out were so large! They must have just moved in recently. I am still majorly creeped out.

After that we moved on to the back yard. Again, lots of weed pulling and shrub trimming, but no massive bush evictions... yet. We need a chainsaw.

Also we got a new (to us) fun toy in the back from my parents:

hmm, maybe you can't see it from there, try this:

Yeeeeaaahh. That's the ticket. We have a hammock now! The trees already had hooks in them from the previous owner, and I love hammocks so it was a done deal. I haven't gotten to use it yet, but I'm going to use the crap out of it as soon as I have a spare 5 minutes!

On a less related outdoor note, any history buffs out there might get a kick out of our air conditioner:

We think it's from between 1973 (when the house was built) and the revolutionary war, but we can't get more specific then that. Truly it works well, we're just not sure for how long! Eventually when it does die and we replace the unit I want to move it out of the center of the backyard.

And finally, I'd like to have a moment of silence for our lovely hose. Brian ran over it with the mower (I still can't figure out how, it wasn't out in the yard!). It was a good hose, and will be missed...                    Thank you.

And again thank you to Sanjeev for all your help! You rock!