Deforestation

Here's an overhead shot of the southeast portion of our property from a few months ago. It's not easy to see scale or anything, but here it is anyway.

You can see the giant weed pile there towards the left, and the sort of dead grass area in the middle. The live grass also looks relatively short here, which is surprising given how huge it is now. Here it is back in january or February when we first started looking at the house:

Nothing at all back there. The grass is long but matted down, and there aren't any weeds in sight. It's sort of astonishing to me how much has grown back there in such a short time, especially since we haven't been watering or anything. The bad part is that the weeds are what have been growing, but still.

And here we are as of yesterday. I can now fully recommend that Ortho weed killer. This stuff took these 4-foot tall weeds we had in the back yard and wilted them. They look defeated. Here's what I'm talking about:

I almost feel sorry for it. it was a mighty beast, growing from essentially nothing to a giant mass of vegetation in just a few short months. I am now fully aware of the meaning of the phrase "Growing like a weed." This thing, when...tumescent...was a full four feet tall. And it wasn't the only one. Here's another one in the same general area of the yard:

Hopefully the fence will help to give a sense of scale. I really wish I had thought to get pictures of these either while I was spraying or beforehand, but hopefully you get a sense of their sheer mass. The weed killer did a number on them, though. Every dandelion in the yard got the same treatment and they are all shriveling up as well. The grass appears to be faring perfectly, though. Honestly, I couldn't be more pleased with the Ortho. The sprayer is neat and easy to use, and it felled these monsters with just one application.

So, here are a few more pictures of our lovely lawn, for your enjoyment.

This is the front yard. It's a little tough to see since this is post mortem, but almost the entire yard is composed of dandelions. Ugh. Now that they're dying, we should be able to pull them out much more easily.

Here's a picture of me mowing with our shiny new mower. The weed in the foreground also appears to be pretty alive at this point, so maybe that will do as a "before" shot. In case you're wondering, I'm the lumpy-looking pale one in the hat. I need to work in the yard more and get some tan on those arms.

I'm doing a few passes on the grass with the mower set to 4" and it's still taking a lot of passes to get the grass chewed down. The reel mower is fantastic, though. As long as I'm pushing forward, it's cutting. It also cuts the pieces into a pretty decent mulch, even when the grass is super long. It did jam up a bit when I brought it all the way down to 2" but that's mostly because it had the other 10+" of grass clippings and old thatch still on the ground where it was trying to work. Most gas mowers I've used would get a bit huffy about such working conditions, too.

You can seem some bloomin' dandelions in this shot, too. The grass under the tree in the back needs to be thatched pretty badly, just to remove the matted-down dead leaves if nothing else. I really think a good raking and mowing will have this place looking great. Those are some aspen trees along the back fence, and we're thinking we might tear them out. They're pretty, but the runners are a big pain. If you aren't familiar with aspen trees, they don't drop seeds like most trees, their roots move outward and then push up through the surface to turn into a new tree. Most aspen groves you see are really one continuous root system with a lot of "blooms" I suppose you could call them. I believe the largest living organism in the world is an aspen grove here in CO, since they're all linked together.

Here's my swath. It took a long time to cut it down, but you can see how long the grass is back there.The shorter grass looks dead because it all had super long grass shading it so it couldn't get any sun. It's really thick and dense back there, though. I think a little sun and some water will bring it right back.

That's all I have for now. Thanks for reading!