Hacking...
2005-05-01 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbear...through the jungle. The ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
flower_cat had declared today a gardening party, and although we only had one "guest" we got quite a lot done. (For some reason, Mark does this sort of thing to relax. I'm not complaining.)
We have a Black & Decker heavy-duty weed-whacker called a "Grass Hog" -- it made fairly quick work of the Bermuda grass in the front yard (which was originally a rock garden). Turns out they also make a 2' electric hedge trimmer called, unsurprisingly, a "Hedge Hog", which Mark brought over. The back yard need it desperately.
You see, we had this passion-vine growing up the back wall of our back neighbors' garage. And over the roof. And over our jacaranda tree. And mixing with the banksia, which was also out of control. It's been a couple of years since I paid any attention to the back yard. Oops. About a week ago, the back neighbors shoved the vine off their garage roof (darned good thing; I was worried about how I was going to do it), so that it landed in a waist-high tangle in our back yard. We're talking a ton or so of jungle vine here.
So this afternoon, after dealing with the overgrown shrubs in the front yard, we tackled the back. There was no way we could do it all, clearly, but we did get the tree cleared off. It was just starting to put out leaves, which made it fairly easy to distinguish from the vines, which were well-established and starting to flower. We lost a couple of branches -- two to breakage and one or two to mistakes with the pruner, but on the whole I think the tree's going to be OK. Two weeks ago it would have been easier; one more week and it might well have been impossible.
flower_cat had declared today a gardening party, and although we only had one "guest" we got quite a lot done. (For some reason, Mark does this sort of thing to relax. I'm not complaining.)We have a Black & Decker heavy-duty weed-whacker called a "Grass Hog" -- it made fairly quick work of the Bermuda grass in the front yard (which was originally a rock garden). Turns out they also make a 2' electric hedge trimmer called, unsurprisingly, a "Hedge Hog", which Mark brought over. The back yard need it desperately.
You see, we had this passion-vine growing up the back wall of our back neighbors' garage. And over the roof. And over our jacaranda tree. And mixing with the banksia, which was also out of control. It's been a couple of years since I paid any attention to the back yard. Oops. About a week ago, the back neighbors shoved the vine off their garage roof (darned good thing; I was worried about how I was going to do it), so that it landed in a waist-high tangle in our back yard. We're talking a ton or so of jungle vine here.
So this afternoon, after dealing with the overgrown shrubs in the front yard, we tackled the back. There was no way we could do it all, clearly, but we did get the tree cleared off. It was just starting to put out leaves, which made it fairly easy to distinguish from the vines, which were well-established and starting to flower. We lost a couple of branches -- two to breakage and one or two to mistakes with the pruner, but on the whole I think the tree's going to be OK. Two weeks ago it would have been easier; one more week and it might well have been impossible.