A Bushel of Bushes

Woo!  Cutting down bushes is hard work, and I haven't even tried pulling out the stumps yet!

I have decided that I don't like how my backyard is divided in 2 by a line of bushes and flowerbeds.  It is quite deceiving because my yard looks smaller than it actually is. (Yes, bad grammar.) Some people didn't even realize that our yard extends beyond the flowerbeds!  I want to change this by getting rid of the bushes and some of the flowers.  Over the holiday weekend, I was able to finish cutting down the forsythia bush and another bush I call the burning bush because it bloomed red in the spring.  Both of these bushes were extremely overgrown.

Here is a picture what is left of the forsythia bush.

It put up quite a fight, and I have a lot of scratches on my arms to prove it.  It makes me look like I own a cat that needs declawed.  : p   Now that the forsythia bush is gone, we can actually see the white oak that was hidden behind it.

I was so pumped after cutting down the forsythia bush, that I started on the burning bush that same day.  If I had known just how tedious and frustrating the burning bush was going to be, I might have procrastinated.  I had thought that the forsythia bush was a pain, but this other bush was worse.  It had no main trunk, but was made up of individual smaller trunks that were all interwined.  It took me a good 2 days to get it cut down.

Here is a pic after Day 1's efforts.

Believe it or not, this bush was twice as big before I started.

Here is what it looks like now.

We didn't even know that tree was there until after I started cutting down the bush!

About a week or two ago, I was working on the forsythia bush when Jim came up to me and told me he was going to look around the house to formulate a plan for cleaning the 2nd story gutters.  I didn't think much of it and continued my trimming.  Next thing I know, I look up to see this!

Jim with a ladder precariously perched on my craft room roof!

I of course scolded him and told him to wait for me to help him.  We spent the rest of that afternoon cleaning gutters.  They were pretty stuffed with maple seeds, so it was good that we cleaned them before the recent storms came through.

Busy Jim

Since Jim isn't much of a blogger, I guess I'll have to tell you what he has been up to besides work. 

Jim has spent a lot of time on the craftroom shelves.  We decided to save money by buying the wood and cutting out the shelves ourselves.  We've borrowed our dads' miter saw and router, so Jim has had fun playing with those.  I think the shelves are coming out nicely.  Here is a profile pic of one of the shelves.  The other pic is Jim carrying it on his head.

These shelves seem to be taking forever, but they are finally going up on the walls.  Jim snuck a pic of me painting the shelf supports in the garage.

Yea for shelves on walls!

Besides the shelves, Jim has been hard at work on the firepit.  I think it came out nice.  There had already been an existing small firepit, so we just expanded it a little.  We didn't realize until after Jim was done, that some tree branches from my miko tree hang over the pit.  We'll try to trim them back before our first fire.

Along with the firepit, Jim has been practicing grilling on our new cheap charcoal grill.

After finishing the firepit, Jim was supposed to mow the lawn; however, he did something that he wasn't supposed to do which resulted in breaking my wheelbarrow.  We have a cement pad behind our garage that seems to be the remnants of an old shed with foundation.  Last month, my MIL and I had cleaned up all the glass that was in one corner of the pad.  I was under the impression that Jim and I had agreed that the only other thing we would do before our housewarming concerning the cement pad was to bend down the metal pipes sticking out of the ground at the corners.  Well, Jim got over-zealous and decided to start removing the cement blocks around the pad.  The blocks were heavy, so he just lobbed them into the wheelbarrow.  Unfortunately, the wheelbarrow didn't appreciate this method, and the tub cracked in several places.

Jim was mad at himself.

I could have gotten mad at him too for not listening to me, and then breaking the wheelbarrow, but instead I struck a deal with him...I wouldn't get mad at him for this if he doesn't get mad at me the next time I break something.   I told him that he just made more work for himself.

Here is a before and after pic of Jim's wayward efforts.

This pic was taken from the same corner.  : (

Unfortunately, he never did finish this job.  He also didn't get to mow the lawn that day because it rained.

  See, husbands should listen to their wives!

Jim has decided to take part in deforestation and has started to clean our gutters.  We've only managed to do the garage so far. We haven't gotten to our house gutters just yet.

  Jim must have found something smelly by the look on his face in the second pic.

Jim has also removed a dead limb which had a tree swing hanging on it.  We wanted to remove the swing and limb before the party so that no one was tempted to play on it.  We didn't want a big tree branch falling on any of our guests.  We will hopefully be able to put a new swing on a different tree in the future.

Is that a monkey in that tree?  Nope, just Jim.

So, that is what Jim has been up to in the past couple of weeks.  Maybe one of these days he'll write his own post.  ^_^*