July 18, 2020 Yes, we’d found it, there was definitely a lot of green – big trees, small trees, saplings sprouting up all over, weeds, brambles, lots of ragweed and goldenrod, and don’t forget the poison ivy. Things had literally gone to seed. While I definitely prefer a more natural landscape over a perfectly groomed one, this was carrying things a bit far! The rock walls had collected years worth of dead leaves, and the brambles choked out a good amount of the driveway. The brambles were my personal Audrey II, trying to snag and grab me at every turn!
We really needed some serious guys-on-tractors kind of landscaping, but that was way down on the list compared to other priorities, and we were enthusiastic, so in spare moments I tackled a few things on my own, with hand tools, a wheel barrow, some rakes and a pump sprayer for the poison ivy. Our good friend and Porsche mechanic Mark donated an old push mower to the cause, and even gave it an oil change, so I could tidy up the weeds growing like old-man whiskers all over the driveway, make inroads in the weed patches, and mow the small amount of grass that passed for a yard.
Bob attacked the plastic and wire fencing from the huge dog run in the woods behind the garage. The former owner was extremely fond of his Weimaraner dogs, and had built a very extensive enclosure, with metal gates, metal posts sunk into concrete and hundreds of feet of mesh fencing stapled to the trees and wrapped onto the posts, including a dog door into the garage workshop. It must have been a huge effort to install, but over the years, it became all grown over and a major project to cut out, disassemble and drag out of the woods. Bob got it done. But what to do with all the unruly yards of wire mesh, (and random dirty tarps)? In the end we wrangled it sort of flat, cut it into sort of manageable sections, rolled it up as tight as we could, jumped up and down on it, and lassoed it up with baling twine – it was left waiting for the dumpster to arrive.
Never a dull moment. The weather was consistently dry and hot, which was great in some ways, but we were learning that the drier the weather, the dustier the road… hmmm.
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