Friday in the Woods

It is going to be a busy weekend, and today was no exception!  Mother Nature blessed us, after last night's rainstorm and this morning's grey drizzle, with what turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous afternoon.  Blue skies and amazing fall colors.  After a morning of errands, Nick and I took a nice long walk around the neighborhood.

Rough neighborhood.

I love fall!  Especially Indian Summer days like this.  When we returned home, we wanted to do some yardwork but the ground and leaves were still too wet for the massive raking that the yard needs.  So instead we turned our attention to the slope downhill at the front of our front yard, where it meets the street.  To say that this part of our property is scrubby and overgrown would be an understatement.

The front of our house in September.

This, quite frankly, is an eyesore, and we are determined to be rid of it.  The picture above shows the house last month after Nick and his parents had spent many hours pulling up weeds and young trees; you can see that the area to the right of the picture is much clearer than that on the left.  Given the gorgeous weather today, Nick and I decided to spend a few more hours on it.

As of this morning, it looked liked this:

When we were finished for the day:

Pretty significant progress!  The area we have left to clear and thin looks like this:

We're getting there.  You can actually see the houses across the street from our front yard now!  The foliage we pulled out is all sorts of pretty colors this time of year so that was a shame, but the colors belonged to the baby beech and oak trees and we do not need more of those.  There's also some sort of obnoxious vine that is trying to strangle the flowering shrub we want to keep.  We might actually be able to finish this weekend; depends on what else we find to occupy our time.  We're taking a tour of Walnut Hill Farm Saturday or Sunday and those leaves won't rake themselves...