UNVEILING A NEW AREA

One of the things we're trying to do now is every year, we want to clear a new area on the property.  It could be a new permanent trail or widening an existing green space.  I don't always blog about it because progress from week to week can be slow and just showing a picture of a few feet of clearing is not that exciting, ha. These can take a few months depending on weather and other projects so we'd rather unveil it when all the hard part is done.

Here is (was!) this season's project:

Overgrown area before

It is an area with trees that we really wanted to clean up because it was so overgrown.  It's one of the few spots on the property (at least that we can get to) that has "regular" trees, no mesquites.  Mesquite trees are nice but they have thorns and they don't grow up straight and tall to create a shady area that you can walk under (at least not for a LOT of years).  It's hard to tell how overgrown it was in this photo but it was...and we saw its potential.  

The photo above was from last year.  

So I started clearing as I had time.  Sometimes I mowed around it if I could, taking a little bit more each time around on the mower.

Or THROUGH it, if I could do that.

Clearing the property

And I would slowly make progress.

Other times, I had to put on the boots and then dig around with (gloved) hands and take out all the discarded junk that was there from years past.  

All of this (and more) was in that patch above.  Concrete pieces, old power tools and metal poles.  Can't mow over those things at ALL.  Someone who lived there temporarily before us discovered that an overgrown area was a great place for dumping their "out of sight out of mind" objects. 

For us, not such a great place...it was more work.

Still other areas, like this after mowing, required me to get off the mower and grab a machete and some hedge clippers.

But slowly we saw progress, week after week...

And our space got bigger and bigger...

And in all directions...

Clearing brush before

Here's a great before and after set of pictures.  The above was before, about mid April.

Clearing brush after

This was this past weekend, after.  

Same spot, same angle.  

All clear!

And here it is looking at it from behind the house.

Here is another before and after.  Above is the before when I had cleared about half of it (June-ish)...

...and here is the after, from the same angle.  Not too bad for some part time weekend work on top of everything else we have to do out there.  It makes us happy to see progress like this, no matter how small. More happens than you might realize when I start going crazy with the mower, some tools, and have a little time on my hands, ha!

With the manual labor in this spot more or less done, now comes the most important part...the fun part.  It's all cleaned up and cleared and we have a WHOLE NEW spot to plan things for next year (or maybe later this Fall).

Shade loving plants?

A bird haven/sanctuary?

A spot for an "outdoor room", maybe a living room of sorts with chairs to relax in?

Time to dust off those "Inspiration Thursday" posts that we put up for this very reason.  One thing is for sure, we have our very own mini-forest now, ha!

TIME FOR PLANNING!