Adieu, Abominable Bush
Apr. 13th, 2022 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
general_radixDad and I (with some help from one of my siblings, Bug) have been doing some yard work the past couple days. Our target: "the Abomination", a patch of small trees and shrubbery at the end of the house.
In years past, the Abomination was actually pretty nice to look at, especially when the mulberry tree was still around (it was cut down after its trunk split and threatened to punch a branch through my window); recently...not quite as much.
If you still think it looks alright, keep in mind that I took this particular photo in 2020 and it hadn't gotten totally snarled up yet.
Dad had been wanting to take a hatchet to the Abomination for a long while now, and if we waited too long--especially with all the rain--it would overgrow past our ability to tackle it. Luckily, we got our chance soon enough:
(Above: a sample of what we cut down; below: our progress after session 1)
Bug was awake at the right time once to help us drag stuff to the side of the road; by the time we called it a day, our pile was pretty damn massive. Especially since it must be around 30% sticker vine by volume (I got jabbed multiple times trying to either snip it or pick that shit up for disposal).
Oh yeah, I mentioned chainsaws in the cut text. Now was as good a time as any for Dad to test out this mini handheld chainsaw he got last year; I think it shaved off around three or four days of work in one go, even taking down two entire fir trees (the second one was so damn heavy and had so many other things tangled in it that we cut that session short).
After that, I went back out by myself to snip whatever we didn't get the other day that the shears and super-snippers could handle; between bursts of rain and more goddamn sticker vine, I think I did an alright job:
This is the current state of the pile. It was much more impressive before it got soaked.
At the moment, the only things left are a bunch of stumps (including the remains of the mulberry tree), a few small trees too powerful for the super-snippers, and one tree that has bird's nest in it that I insisted on leaving up. Pretty sure that tree is under tension from being tangled against other small trees, so picking those off without slingshotting the nest into the wild blue yonder will be...fun. :U
In years past, the Abomination was actually pretty nice to look at, especially when the mulberry tree was still around (it was cut down after its trunk split and threatened to punch a branch through my window); recently...not quite as much.
If you still think it looks alright, keep in mind that I took this particular photo in 2020 and it hadn't gotten totally snarled up yet.
Dad had been wanting to take a hatchet to the Abomination for a long while now, and if we waited too long--especially with all the rain--it would overgrow past our ability to tackle it. Luckily, we got our chance soon enough:
(Above: a sample of what we cut down; below: our progress after session 1)
Bug was awake at the right time once to help us drag stuff to the side of the road; by the time we called it a day, our pile was pretty damn massive. Especially since it must be around 30% sticker vine by volume (I got jabbed multiple times trying to either snip it or pick that shit up for disposal).
Oh yeah, I mentioned chainsaws in the cut text. Now was as good a time as any for Dad to test out this mini handheld chainsaw he got last year; I think it shaved off around three or four days of work in one go, even taking down two entire fir trees (the second one was so damn heavy and had so many other things tangled in it that we cut that session short).
After that, I went back out by myself to snip whatever we didn't get the other day that the shears and super-snippers could handle; between bursts of rain and more goddamn sticker vine, I think I did an alright job:
This is the current state of the pile. It was much more impressive before it got soaked.
At the moment, the only things left are a bunch of stumps (including the remains of the mulberry tree), a few small trees too powerful for the super-snippers, and one tree that has bird's nest in it that I insisted on leaving up. Pretty sure that tree is under tension from being tangled against other small trees, so picking those off without slingshotting the nest into the wild blue yonder will be...fun. :U
