Our largish backyard has two parts: The back and the back-back, separated by a woodsy little patch now perhaps 30 feet deep. (That “now” is the tip-off—it should be a single line of trees.) We have for many years used the back-back as an out-of-site-out-of -mind dump for lawn and yard waste: brush; leaves; the stripped, forlorn Christmas tree; the occasional obnoxiously drunk picnic guest. The result is a lawn perhaps half the size it should be, surrounded by scrap saplings and impenetrable bushes, all overlaying and intermixed with decaying piles of random organic detritus. It is, in short, a mess.
I’m determined to shape this up. Over 30 years ago, I spent a few months reclaiming several fields on acreage we’d bought out in the country long before the market went crazy. We eventually sold the land when we decided we liked living in town, but it turned out that, although I’ve never liked gardening, I do enjoy this sort of dumb, rough work.
But this dumb, rough work requires tools. The ancient, amazingly efficient and powerful Gravely Model L ...
... which ate saplings for lunch and tossed off random organic detritus as a snack, would have made short work of the mess, but is unfortunately long gone. So I’m going to have to make do with chainsaw, pole saw, hand-loppers, weed-whacker (weak, weak), lawnmower, the usual empowering salty language, and a borrowed, rented, or stolen chipper. I also just discovered that I need a bolt-cutter to deal with the ruined and rusty (1950s, I think—possibly earlier) wire fencing that an earlier owner for some reason strung from tree to tree in that woodsy patch.
Here’s a vision of the scene at the moment:
And here’s an architect’s vision of how it will look when I’m done:
Well, okay, that’s Merton College. But I’m definitely going for the croquet deal.
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