Belated Back Yard Update

Haven't posted for awhile.  Things have been busy for D and I both personally and professionally.  Oh, and we've also both been stricken with pretty gruesome cases of poison ivy.  

But full schedules and itchy rashes notwithstanding, we've made time for work around the yard.  With how crappy the yard used to look, I think we've made real progress.  

Remember this?  This was in the beginning.  The vine orgy.

note the overgrown mess of honeysuckle strangling the mulberry in the back

Fantastic tangle of dead crap left in mounds for us to clean up 

We cleaned up the dead vine remnants.  Then D removed the vintage, rusty laundry pole.

 This is what it looked like this spring  

We planted grass seed, and some weeds popped up.

 Transplanted hostas from the front.  

And they are being eaten by slugs.  Swiss cheese here.

I've tried beer traps, but using homebrew must be a mistake, because the beer traps are always empty.

It's not perfect, but its green and the lumber has been moved.  

The grass grew in very well at the base of the tree, and quickly too.  

I think the giant elephant-ear sized leaves look like rhubarb, but I haven't actually identified them.  If they are, they can stay.  If they are not rhubarb, they are outta here.

I planted another hosta and a second astilbe.  I need to mulch this area, but just haven't got around to it.  The lily has already bloomed.  It looks like it too made a successful transplant.  

And on the other side of the yard, the tree branches from the honeysuckle felled by my husband the were left to dry out along with whatever vine was strangling that tree here.  D chopped that down with an ax.

This side of the yard was pretty hideous for a few weeks.

:: wince ::

 The day finally came when the branches were dried enough to be (relatively) easily stripped down to be put into the yard waste bins for collection. 

 It was around this time that I got poison ivy

After hours outside stripping branches, I'd barely made a dent.

even with bobby's help

 D made a more orderly and controlled lumber pile.  Using 2 concrete sidewalk squares left intact from the concrete removal on the side of the house to raise the pile up off the ground to keep them dry, and four rebar poles.  We'll be covering the lumber pile with a tarp to keep the burn pile dry.  

And D spent a third afternoon breaking down more branches,
and this is what it looks like now.  Eh?

One more time.

Before:  

After: