Friday, September 7, 2012

The Dark and Evil Forest -- Redux

Keeping the plants in my backyard under control is a sisyphean task.  No matter how many weeds I remove, they seem to come back bigger and stronger.   Two years ago I wrote this blog post about my attempts to remove the overgrown nettles.   Despite hours of work, you will notice that the "before" and "after" pictures don't look all that different.

The following summer, I was even more defeated by the task.    Not only do the giant spiders hate me, but even the plants themselves hate me.   When my yard began to look like the amazon jungle, and the risk of wild animals roosting became too great, the college (who owns my house) kindly sent their gardeners over to clean up the mess.   On the one hand, I was very appreciative of help.  On the other hand, I felt very bad giving the college gardeners extra work  --- they do a wonderful job with the college grounds, and they really don't need an extra yard to deal with.

So this summer, after all my travels were done, I decided that I would take serious aim at the backyard.  I learned a few lessons from my previous attempts.

Lesson 1.  Get thicker gloves.
Lesson 2.  Always keep the giant spiders where you can see them.

So prepared, I spent the last few afternoons filling about 20 large trash bags with weeds.   Here are the before and after photos. 

Can you tell the difference this time? 

PS: broken link is now fixed. 

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