What I Did Today

Today I decided to finish cleaning up all the volunteer growth in the back yard. With all the rain and cool weather earlier in the year, volunteer elms and sumac and weeds went wild. At the start it looked like this:

 

  

After a miserable day in the 100 degree heat, things began to look more presentable. Like this:

 

  

  

Now all that is left for tomorrow is chopping all the trees and limbs up and carrying it out to the alley to be hauled away. Sometime this fall it will be time to pull all the creeping vine and then rake all the pine needles. At that point it will be clean for another year (and we'll be able to see the rock under the pines for a brief while).

I didn't have to work alone today. Molly the wonder dog thought it was a good time to explore the forbidden side of the yard with me. (Molly is kept on the other side of the back yard and only rarely gets to run wild on this side.)

 

  

You can tell by her lolling tongue that it was warm. I kept refilling her water dish with cold water, so she had no interest in going back into the house. She wanted to explore worse than she wanted to be cool.

I did find some interesting things as I was bushwhacking. For example, the volunteer sumac was fruiting. (Looks a lot like bunches of grapes, doesn't it?)

 

There were also some interesting sentimental things to be found in the trees as well. Way back when they were young, the Son and his cousin used to play in the pine trees, using cord to tie things in the trees, etc. Now all these years later, some of the cords are working free. I found this on the ground under the pine in the corner:

 

It's mate is still tied to a branch up in the tree.

I'm tired and sore, so its time to go shower and then relax. So what did you do today?