DSIFQ Continues the Lanscaping Offensive

I'm hoping that last weekend's demolition will be the "Gettysburg" to the civil war between us and our backyard that helps turn the tide in our favor. Although, as I once heard a genteel Charlestonian woman say 'it should not be called the Civil War because there was nothing civil about it.' And our landscaping is anything but civil.

Saturday Brian's family came over to help us rip out trees and the old fence! It was really exciting actually, because I was sooooo ready for the overgrown trees that were RIGHT on the fence and house to be gone, and that fence was barely 'fencing' as it was. One section blew over in a storm last month!
 

Unfortunately, my 'before' pictures don't really show how craptacular it really was, I avoided seeing it close up as much as possible, and they were from last summer, and a sea of green always helps! See all the pine trees and shrubs on the fence line? They are RIGHT ON the fence line. Also, you can sort of see in the picture that the fence is sort of tacked together... It had boards and random pieces of wood all nailed together haphazardly, trying to keep this thing standing. Half the posts were rotted through, and there were short beams propping it up in some parts.

Well Brian's family came over with a wonderful chainsaw and other tools for the job and we started chopping. I don't have any 'in progress' shots because I was also helping (champion branch hauler at your service!) but the trees all came down quick.

While stomping around we realized again how bumpy and weird our yard is. We'd both love to have it completely graded and drained properly, but that's just not going to happen.

We also cut down a very large, very dead ash tree from the other side of the fence. It was leaning pretty far over into our yard, and it was libel to crack and fall soon. When it went down, it was so dry that it shattered! Almost into a big puff of dust and twig. I'm glad (and so is my mom) that it's taken care of, because it was apparently quite the danger! After the trees were chopped apart and piled accordingly I made lunch, then we ripped out the fence.

At the end of the day, the yard looked like this:

You can see the branch pile, and one of the trunk piles (there's another one over to the left, and stumps stacked on the patio area). There is also the fence pile over there too.

We have since moved everything around. Most of the branches have been taken by Brian's parents, and we moved the rest of them to the side yard off the grass. We also stacked the trunks/stumps firewood style next to the garage door for easy removal, and less grass death.

Another nugget of progress was calling Miss Dig. They have now come out and marked all our electrical, gas and water lines. I'll try to get a picture of that. So once we measure and order the new fence, we should be set to install the new bad-boy! I can only hope that we will continue our forward momentum, and have a backyard we can be proud of soon.