Friday coffee post - landscaping edition

I have had a shift in mindset regarding living on one acre on a hill over a ravine over a creek in Oregon. We have been here 7 years now and each summer I did 2-3 relatively large projects, like refinishing one deck or re-seeding the postage stamp sized lawn or hauling rocks or cutting raspberry vines, or planting our blueberry bushes, or trimming trees. But it has not been enough and some areas of property have only been barely touched, or not touched at all, for 7 years.

This means my usable area has shrunk because the unrelenting jungle took over those areas.

With all this time on my hands not driving anywhere, I was able to start working on the landscaping more. We got the wood chipper and it was my best friend. Until a couple days ago when I accidentally got a rock in it and I broke the blades and then found I could not replace the blades because the bolts holding them in were stuck. The wood chipper has a great warranty and I will get a replacement, but in the meantime I have no wood chipper. And I had chopped down like 10 trees and I didn't get them all chopped up before I broke it.

I had to move the felled trees to one of the areas I had cleaned out.

That has been a lot of my story lately. My acre is so chock-a-block that I have found that in order to clean out one area I actually have to clean out another area first in order to actually get to that area.

We have giant redwood tree on the acre and I had not raked under it, ever. I had to rake up 7 years of dropped pine needle things. It filled up 3 of the city trash cans. I disturbed mice and snakes and some kind of bugs nest. Ok I didn't actually see any mice and snakes. And I only heard the bugs before I ran away.

The reality is that after roughly 40 hours of work I feel like I've cleared about 1% of my property. And so now I know it is never over and not to look for the end. Just do the process. Every day. I do enjoy it although I talk to myself constantly while I'm out there and I curse very terribly. I have found that the best thing to do is focus on one section and work on it until it is complete. That means I have to turn a blind eye to all the other areas that need help. In past summers I have not done that and it was very overwhelming and depressing to turn 360 and see that everything needs help. It is still hard to not do that when I know that in addition to the jungle I still need to paint one side of my house and completely refinish and/or rebuild 2 of my decks.

Also I heard Tim Ferriss say "remove to improve" and I think he was quoting someone else because that's what he does, but the point is that is my mantra now too. I don't trim trees anymore. I REMOVE them. Because now I know what people mean when they say "I have weed trees on my property." I have them too. They are not trees, they are giant weeds, and they will come back. I don't trim hedges, I remove them. I don't push back ivy (sigh), I remove it. for now. I don't save the blackberry branches for the blackberries. I just remove them. There's more blackberries someplace else on my acre.

I cut my right thumb on my wood chipper when I didn't know where the broken blades were. I got an infection on my left thumb from a thorn or splinter that is still stuck in it. But my coffee is empty and I'm going to go outside and pull ivy now. I had asked Mae what area I should focus on next while I'm waiting for my new wood chipper. She said, "can you clear the path?" and I said, "OMG WHICH PATH"  and she told me this muddy one that goes down to the creek. So that's what I'm working on. Making the path wider while being entirely surrounded by jungle. I cut vines and wrap them up into a ball and then I throw it like a football.

Here is a picture of Tommy in 2017 helping me clear that same path, so you have an idea of what I am talking about.