Taming the Jungle

Remember that lovely story about how my mother got me a beautiful bamboo plant for college and I managed to kill it? Well, for our anniversary this year, Josh gave me a lovely stalk of bamboo to keep at my desk to remind me of him (awwwwww, how sweet!). I followed the directions exactly, placing it snuggly in a jar of pebbles and watered it lightly.

My bamboo plant...before I killed it.

I am (sadly) here to report that my skills as a plant killer are at their peak condition, despite several years of inactivity. Apparently I have a knack for figuring out how to murder even the strongest of the flora kingdom. I could be the villain in a totally lame comic book series about a green thumb avenger. 

Yes. My bamboo is dead. It fought bravely against my powers of destruction for a total of 42 days.

Funny enough, last weekend at our house was similar to the aforementioned comic book plot; a gang of plant destroyers ascending on an unsuspecting landscape with a caped crusader (Terri) fighting off the evil forces with nothing but a pair of gardening shears to save as many civilians as she could.

A group of guys from Josh's choir showed up bright and early with chainsaws, trucks and work gloves to help us remove all that we could of the seriously overgrown landscape.  Josh and his team swept through the yard, cutting down trees and pulling out shrubs.

The work begins early Sunday morning.

Hooking up some chains to some of the big trees and pulling them out of the garden.

Terri was kind enough to look past my criminal past and teach me about the existing plants in our gardens. We pruned some Russian Sage and located Hostas around the yard. She tamed the gigantic prickly thorny things out front and helped me remove TONS of baby trees that had taken over most of the garden beds.

But after a few trees/shrubs were down, we realized that we needed some professional help. Naturally, we set our sights on a 3,000 pound wood chipper and took Jimmy's van into Plymouth to pick up our beast. Our resident turkeys were not happy with all the noise and disruption, voicing their disapproval loudly as they strutted through the yard (moving much more quickly once the wood chipper was turned on). With only 90 minutes to pulverize the remnants of our yard, the guys went into hyper-drive.

Hooking up the wood chipper!

Feeding the beast!!

Can't believe all the brush/trees we cut down!

So without further ado, here are the coveted "Before" and "After" photos.

BEFORE

Front of the house before we started work.

Front/Side of the house before we tackled the yard.

And AFTER!!!!

All clean!!!!!!!!

Thank you again to everyone who came out last weekend to help us clean. From my parents and aunt Sandy, to Josh's parents and all the choir guys who showed up on a chilly Sunday to tame this yard. We can't thank you enough for your hard work- we could not have done it without you!!!!