Yard Work... definitely not for sissies.

My huney is both brilliant and terribly lazy. We have lived in our house for almost 4 years now and I have noticed that every year, the yard just tends to get smaller and smaller.

How does this happen? Glad you asked. See the back part of our lot is wooded. So is one side. The side that we share with our favorite neighbors. They are probably our favorite neighbors because we have a tropical rain forest growing between our houses.

So, every year instead of mowing up close to the woods and rainforest, my darling husband just "forgets" to mow the 3 ft closest to these areas. Thus, our yard is 9 to 12 ft smaller than when we first moved in. Now I was suspious about this, but when I decided to plant a little garden near the woods area, it soon became apparent that my husband was up to an evil plan...

I planted my garden about 6 feet from the woods, about 2 weeks before mowing season started this year. So a couple of weeks later, my huuney goes out and mows the yard, and "Viola", he doesn't mow behind the garden! So now our woods just ate 6 more feet of the yard! I asked him about this and he said." I can't get the lawn mower back there. So just to prove my point, "I go out and weedeat the back 12. (feet closet to the woods and rainforest) and I ask him again, (this time in front of our neighbor, all of us standing by the windows overlooking the woods.) "Why can't you mow behind the garden?"

"I can't get back there." This sends my neighbor into a fit of "soda thru your nose" giggles. (Me too!) And we start commenting on all the things that we can fit thru the space between the garden and woods. A Jeep, A transfer truck, a marching band, a third world country...

So we'll just have to see, what all he mows next time.

Later that day, I decide to tackle the rainforest between the houses. The rainforest is known as "No Man's Land" in our cul de sac. It was designed and installed by some blind, drunk, hack from county services before we moved in. No Man's Land is situated on a down hill slope from the cul de sac and is suppose to serve as a place for rainwater to run off from the cul de sac. There is even a very impressive manhole and drain at the top of the hill in the cul de sac. This is the only impressive part. When you walk down the slope you will see that that drain ends about half way down our properties and the drain empties out into a rock pile , then No Man's Land, which consists of overgrown brush, trees and awful amounts of briars. The neigborhood kids have lost many a ball down the drain, and into No Man's Land. Every once in a while, you'll see a kid down there screaming his lungs out, because he made the fatal mistake of going after a basketball and has become entangled in the briars. I personally have battle No Man's Land many atime to save my little darling's life...

So anyway, seeing that my industrious huney was never going to get around to trimming back No Man's Land, and thinking that we have about a billion dollars worth of basketballs down there, I decided to tackle the mess myself. My tools of destruction were the weedeater, a hedgetrimmer and a dry wall saw. After 3 hours time, I managed to clear a path about 12 feet wide and 10 feet long. I found a red ball, a wiffle ball, a football, and the neighbors secret dirt bike trail. I piled all the brush in a heap at the edge of the yard and had a pile of brush about the size of our guest bedroom. I was quite proud of myself.

I found 2 Mimosa trees in the mess, and decided that I would keep the mimosas in the ground, because they are just about my favorite tree. The only trouble was that, I had this ugly old witchy looking tree that looked about petrified, growing practically on top of one of my Mimosa's.
So I spent about a half an hour trying to saw that crazy tree down with my dry wall saw. I had already sawed about a dozen trees down, so I know that this tree was definitely on some kind of tree steriods.

Finally the next day, the neighbor had to come over with his chain saw and saw that sucker down. His chain saw barely would cut it, and the poor neighbor was just a sweating, and a cussin up a storm. It took about 15 minutes to saw it down. I was so happy!!!

Later that day I began to clear the back part of No Man's Land. This was the worst ordeal of my live. I would rather have my arms and legs chewed off by rats than have to do this again. The back part was just full briars. As I cleared it off, I had to wonder about the first suckers who came to America, and what they thought about the briars as they were trying to clear thier lands, way back when.

Now the briars in No Man's Land are also on steriods. Most of them are more than 9 feet high, and grow on a single stalk. So the briars are basically shaped like a whip, and have the same flex (Not that I'm a expert on whips, mind you!) The only way to cut down the briars were to saw thru them with the drywall saw. I was wearing shorts, big mistake! I had gardening gloves that I paid a dollar for from Target, even bigger mistake!! Every inch of the stalk had briars all over it, so when you are sawing thru the briar it's cutting your hand like a slice of bologna. Once the briar stalk is sawed thru, then you have to pull it from the rest of the man eating plants that are intertwined in the briars. Once the briar stalk is frre, it whips around and inbeds its selve into various parts of your body. Like the back of your leg, your arm, the front of your leg, etc...etc..

So now, I look like I have been in a fight with a bag full of mad cats. After 3 hours of torture, and 1 basketball, 1 soccer ball and a orange hand ball, I finally gave up working in the yard because I was dripping blood from my wounds and attracting flies.

As in the words of our dear Scarlett, "As God is my witness!" "I will conquer No Man's Land!!! Maybe next weekend. So, do me a favor, if I never blog on here again,. would you kindly send a search party out to No Man's Land. Maybe you can even get National Geographic to sponser the trip.......It's that bad!!