The Mighty Bushwhacker

It is no secret that I do not like yardwork. Nope. Working in the sun, in a place where all kinds of creepy-crawlies can actually touch me is not my idea of a fun time. But I do like to have a nice garden, and fresh veggies in the summer, and tomatoes to can, so I must make concessions...

Bruce and I have been trying to make a yard that has been neglected for two years look decent; and we are also trying to make a vegetable garden. It's a lot of work! I am not usually clever enough to take before and after pictures, so you'll just have to take my word that between the two of us we have probably dug out about a million or two BIG dandelions all over the yard (there's at least half a million left, and more coming up from seed...).

That is just a tiny fraction of all our dandelions!
(These ones are gone now, by the way.)

And we are taking out a brick patio—well, we took out a brick patio in the back yard because 1. We don't need another patio, and 2. It is in the only place in the yard that will get sun for most of the day; this is the place for the veggie garden.

There's Jessica, on the brick patio, cutting the limbs off of unsuspecting bushes.

And there's my manly husband, hauling bricks.
(This would have been so much easier—or at least faster—with a wheelbarrow!)

And here's our stack of bricks (in the number of 600 or so).
We will use some for paths between our garden beds. What to do with the rest of them? An outdoor pizza oven? ;-) 

So, over the last couple of weeks we have removed all the bricks, pulled up the garden fabric (which is in astonishingly good condition) and started the bush removal. Out of about ten bushes, we only have two left to go.

Here's the foliage we've removed so far.
I think the brick wall behind it is six feet high.

We also found buried treasure!

Buried treasure: a Star Wars lunch tray, a watering can, a green cup (which is holding the grubs that I find in the dirt), two spoons and a very bent fork, and two matchbox cars.

Something we did not anticipate, although we should have, is that the ground under the bricks, after years and years of being covered, has almost turned into a brick itself. It's going to take some work to get it soft enough for garden plants.

Anyway, this morning I finished taking out a big bush all by myself! (No, really. You should be impressed by this.) I started digging at the roots last night, for about an hour or so, and this morning I decided that I was going to finish the job and get rid of it. And I did! Yaaaayyy!

Almost there...

And behold!
The Mighty Bushwhacker, with her Kill.
This is a much better name than Bruce gave me when I was
mercilessly hacking the limbs off of helpless shrubberies:
The Destroyer.

I'd really like to get the last bush out of there... But today is a busy day, and tomorrow is busier—unless I work in the afternoon today. It was hot enough out there at 8:30 a.m.; a two-hour digging, chopping, pushing, and pulling session is not going to happen at 2:00 p.m.! But it will happen sometime soon. It will. And maybe I'll even remember to take some pics as the garden goes in.

For now, it is time to hit the shower.