"Before"

This is one of two live oaks in the front yard.

Son (with Littlest Kidlet as spotter and assistant and all of us on straps to guide each branch as it came down) has been working away at it because it is unattractive, full of galls (which I'm keeping for dyeing) full of spiders in the fall, and trying to grow an oak forest in our lawn. Any two or so of those would be grounds for termination in my universe (besides, we need the room for fruit trees) so it is going away.

Once the branches are cut we drag them to the back yard 

Where it is (mostly) my job to cut them up as much as I can without sawing so that the bits can go in the chiminea. I'm considering renting a wood chipper so that we can mulch up at least some of it and speed up the process at the same time.

My intention was to replace this tree with a 'Dolgo' crabapple which has large, useful fruit but I'll need Eldest Kidlet to get pictures to show why the plan was changed. 

Happy birthday to me!

The six cubic yards of mulch that I ordered Friday was delivered this morning as scheduled. Son, Littlest Kidlet and I have moved a decent amount of it so far but need to finish getting it spread as the pile is blocking the garage. It's important to do this quickly since a large portion of my nursery order showed up on Saturday. I now have almost two dozen fruit trees (hurrah for dwarf varieties) and berry bushes either soaking or just plain waiting to get planted.

This is actually phase two since "phase one" was clearing the front flower beds of the dark, heavy, mosquito havens that passed for bushes there. Son and I planted a number of yellow "Knock-out" roses as well as some herbs and other edible flowers.

There are some more flowers scheduled to go in once the rest of my order gets here (and of course the beds got mulched today while this picture is a little older) but I'm generally very satisfied with the results.

Been awhile

In the meantime (in between the second -to-last post and the one before this) We've moved to the Houston area, Eldest Kidlet is attending the local high school as a freshman, and I'm waiting on a massive nursery order that the other kids and I have been prepping the yard for.

Also, the oldest two and I will be going with a church group to Mongolia for a short-term missions trip (the first for any of us) in July. I've created a Facebook Page so that supporters can follow the process and know what the current prayer needs are.