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Saturday, February 14, 2009

New Flower Beds

So, because we haven't done anything in the past two years except completely renovate our entire home we decided now was the time to finally do some work to our landscaping. For those of you that haven't seen pictures of our house since we first moved you'll see that we've painted the shutters and front door as well. I'm not sure if you can tell but we've also recently changed the porch light.


And then there was None

The second bush came out yesterday but not without first breaking a 12,000 lb wench on a Super Duty Ford F-350 pickup. Jared solicited the help of a church member that had a 12,000 lb wench that could without a doubt (or so we thought) pull this second bush out. It turned out not being so easy. In fact after trying for a while with the wench and discovering that we had stripped a gear on the wench from unsuccessfully pulling the bush, Jared began to chop the roots (which had worked their way under the foundation of our house) with an axe and finally was able to pull it out with the super duty truck without the wench. It wasn't easy but now we can move on with completing the flower bed. I'll post pictures when we're done.

Friday, February 13, 2009

One Down One to Go

We're working to do our flower beds. They have received absolutely no attention since we moved here. First thing was to remove the two monstrous 12 foot holly bushes. They were utterly out of control. So last weekend, Jared began by cutting them down with a chainsaw. He then tied a chain around the first one, connected the chain to the hitch on the truck and ATTEMPTED to pull out the roots with NO LUCK! Our neighbor then came over with his truck to try and it bent his hitch ball. This bush is a beast!!
So Thursday afternoon, Jared dug around the bush, beat up the roots with a chainsaw and finally pulled out. Quite proud of his accomplishment, he wanted to have record of his success. So, here it is!


So after his success with Bush #1 he was prepared to try for #2. The problem, however, is that he couldn't pull it from the driveway and would have to get in the grass to pull it out. Once again, Jared dug around the bush, beat the roots with the chainsaw and pulled his truck into the grass. When he began to pull, the result wasn't the same, however. It resulted in the truck sinking into the grass. The other problem is that the chain was so taut that there was no way to unhook it from the truck and the truck was stuck. So, long story short, Jared was able to remove the hitch ball and get his truck out of our front yard. So, here we are...one down, one to go!