I was very busy over the break working diligently on yard projects that are in my 2 year plan for overhauling the front and back yard. When we bought this house, the previous owners did NOTHING (no maintenance) for 14 years! I am pretty much overhauling everything. Well, I took down a hackberry tree that was interfering with telephone and electric lines. It was a bit more difficult than normal because the middle had obviously been cut out by utility workers 5-10 years ago. The non-native tree was significantly diseased. I also took down two live oaks that were in competition and choking three nearby oaks. You can see that I went through one chain and a bottle of oil with my chainsaw. The brush is all hand cut and bundled for pick-up tomorrow. I also did some masonry, I built these two retaining walls. The darker one is 6"x 8" Oklahoma sandstone. Each block weighs about 100 pounds and the total weight was 4 tons. Each block hand placed. Similarly, I built a raised bed for roses by the front out of smaller limestone block. Those blocks only weighed 1/2 a ton! Anyway, it was nice to spend 3 weeks out of the office and doing projects where you can visually see progress in a day instead of the slow pace of academia. As I told Julie when we bought this house, this will be the largest and most extensive project of my landscaping career.
Kevin
