Clearing

It's not very warm today, so we took the opportunity to do some work that requires wearing jeans and boots-- not fun when it's 90, but not too bad at 70. Clearing!!

Jeff already has 2 pairs of loppers, but he bought the second pair because he'd worn out the first, and the second has had it by this time too. So, we went to our favorite money-hole, Home Depot (ok actually our favorite is Lowes, but HD is closer to the paint store where we also had to stop) and bought 2 more pairs. Some Home Depot Employees teased us about "his and hers" loppers.



We started next to the house, intending to clear out the bit of brush keeping you from seeing the creek that's right there, and got through that so quickly that we just kept going. And going... and going... and going... we went along up the creek, clearing anything small enough for the loppers to handle, (that's about 3/4" for me and 1"-1 1/4" for Jeff) pulling down vines, battling prickers, sweating and exclaiming over how much we could see each time we cut something down. We made it a good 50 feet up the hill from the farthest deck, clearing from the stream to the path, and then hopped over to the other side of the path a cleared a bunch on that side as well. We spent about 3 hours out there, and the backyard is a totally different place.





On the screened porch front, we now have blue soffits:



and a mostly black ceiling fan:



Note: I thought I was doing good this morning, lopping away, not even taking breaks, totally keeping up with Jeff.... but after lunch, he went out and painted the soffits blue (and is out there now, working on the white) while I totally crashed and fell asleep on the couch for an hour and a half. oh well, so I'm not as tough as him, surprise surprise :o)