Yard (Or Should that be Hard?) Work

So here is what our house looked like Saturday morning:




Here is what it looked like Saturday afternoon:




And here is what it looks like now:




The house has this really cool stone on the front of it that you could hardly see with those enormous bushes in the way. The chair of the horticulture department stopped by our house last Thursday night and gave us some tips and advice on different things. One thing he recommended was taking those out- which just happened to be something I was advocating for a while now. So while Rob's in California visiting with friends and family and racing, I thought it would be a good time to tear them out and have a little surprise for him when he gets back home. As you can see, I still have a little pile of branches to be picked up and bagged but I ran out of time. There are still three stumps there too that I was unable to get out. I worked on the first stump for about 5 hours on Saturday but it still wouldn't budge. I think I'm going to have to get some professional yard help to get those out. However, we now own pruning shears, a pruning saw, an ax and something we always called a "persuader" in my family. It is a piece of metal that is about five feet long and probably weighs around 50 pounds. One end is pointed and the other is flat. Thankfully, all my limbs are still attached although I do have numerous scratches, cuts and bruises that I didn't have before all this started.

Technical note: They just "helped" us at blogger by adding an autosave feature which makes it nearly impossible for me to post. They claim to have it fixed but that's why I haven't posted for a week and why they may be a little sketchy for a while.