Bushed

Our day started at 7:00 am when we thought that we heard construction trucks on our street.  We are waiting for crews to come in to replace curb and gutters that were cut last week.  Then the crews will grind up the old, broken, split concrete and will blacktop our street.  We had expected the work to start yesterday, but so far nothing has happened.  Whatever woke us up this morning was not construction crews in our neighborhood.

We ate a quick breakfast and headed back to Lindsay's house with the intension of just cutting down the remaining two bushes in front and hauling the debris to the curb.  She gets her garbage collected today, so when the sanitation crews go around, they note who has yard debris that needs collecting.  We wanted to get the branches from the bushes out to the curb so when the village picks up branches, they will get all of the bushes.

Rick tackles cutting into the first of the two remaining bushes.
Note how huge these bushes were.

Temperatures in the 80s were expected today; that is another reason we were at her house by 8:00 this morning.  Today is September 1, so it is Christopher's first day back at teaching and Owen's first day back at his school/daycare.  Since we did not have to worry about his safety while we worked, we were able to move at a rapid pace without keeping an eye out for him.

The second bush proved to be even a
greater challenge.

The first bush we took apart today revealed to us just how tangled and dense these last two bushes were going to be.  They were huge, so even though at one time they were planted within the two-foot wide "garden" area in front of the house, the bushes themselves had grown at least four feet into the yard. Rick did the cutting and pulling apart while I carried all of the branches to the curb where I could add them to the pile. I logged in almost 3.5 miles just walking back and forth!

The last bush proved to be even more of a challenge than the previous one.  The branches were so deeply entangled that when one was cut, three more had to be cut just to extract the whole section from the bush.  Since that bush also was at the corner, through the years it had been trimmed to wrap around that section of the house.

I had to extend the brush pile at the curb until it went around the other side of the tree and pretty much covered the entire front of the property.  I am glad that we do not have to feed all of that tangled mess into a wood chipper. we will leave that to the experts.

Yesterday the brush pile was just to the right of the tree,
but today I had to add more to cover most of the front
of their property.  This pile is at least five feet high.

I thought that we were going to quit once the bushes were down, but I knew that was not going to be the case once Rick said, "Let me put the strap around this first stump and see how hard it will be to get it out." Oka-a-a-y. I knew we were in for the long haul.   Actually, the time was just 9:30, so the temperature had climbed only from the mid-60s when we started into the higher 70s at that point.  Working outside was still tolerable.

When the house originally was landscaped,
both bushes were planted within the two-
foot wide flower garden.

The first stump took a couple of tries and a bit of digging to get it to budge, but it finally broke free of the dirt.  The second stump turned out to be the real trouble-maker.  That stump had a deep root and several smaller roots that wrapped around the house and dove deeply underground.  We did a lot of digging before Rick got out the SawsAll with a pruning blade.  Even cutting down under the stump took more than one attempt.

The second stump fought us to the end.

Meanwhile, of course, the temperatures continued to rise to the point that we were beginning to notice both the heat and the humidity.  We gave extracting the root one last try, and this time the truck was able to drag it out of the ground.  Success!

The yard still looks fine because of the tree in the front yard.

Carrying the stumps to the curb, cleaning up the yard, smoothing out the defined flower beds, and picking up all of the tools took the last of our energy. We are both bushed!  In the end, though, we both agreed that the house looks a lot better at 10:18 am than it did at 8:00 this morning.

Next spring Lindsay and Chris can plan new shrubs
and flowers for their yard.

Yes, the gardens need redefining, the house needs paint, and new shrubbery and flowers need to find homes in the yard, but for the rest of this growing season, just getting the grass to grow where bushes covered the yard and getting the debris hauled away will be enough.  In the spring, Lindsay and Chris can decide what they want to plant to make their house truly their own.