Less of a hot mess

Our yard is slowly starting to transform in to something a little less hideous. Remember this, or this? After many long weekends and sacrificed nap times, things are staring to come together. Because of logistics, we changed our minds on the chipper, so we've been doing it all by hand. It's mind-numbingly tedious, but it gets the job done. With VERY thick gloves we clip each limb into pieces and throw 'em into bags. Luckily, we've made it through the two piles heaviest with stickers.

I can't even tell you how many small trees we've cut down. A lot of them were crooked or too clumped together to ever really amount to much, but it still felt awful having to cut them down. I mean, those trees would cost at least $25 at Lowes (spoken like a true environmentalist!) There are plenty more, though, and the ones we've left should turn out to be great looking trees.

We decided to cut the "woods" in half with the fence. The section in front of the fence will be more manicured, but we'll leave the back half looking more natural (minus the poison ivy, of course!) The fence goes in this week and I can't wait!!

The poison ivy has been a challenge. I started spraying weed killer this week, but if Evan is ever going to be able to play back there, we're probably going to have to kill all the ground cover off and start over. The whole point of the fence was my being able to lay in the sun while he walked around the yard unattended...the poison ivy has really rained on that parade!