Our new, bigger backyard...

Bryan and I hired a team to do 'vegetative maintenance' on our backyard over the weekend. They cleared our all of the thicket and underbrush. We knew it was thick, but not THAT thick. Bryan spent an entire afternoon trying to make a path but got about 3x3 feet done before realizing he hadn't made it far, at all. So we brought in the big guns. It was so thick, we couldn't even walk through it to tag trees to keep.

Before.

During.

It's a bobcat with a tree grinder of some sort on it. Let's not forget that I got to drive it :)

After.

Now we almost fully utilize our yard. It's winter still, so it doesn't look so friendly and green - but they said a nice green ground covering will grow once it warms up! We kept all of the hardwoods. There are designated wetlands back there as well - but the back of it is high, dry land where we hope to build a gazebo of a sort once Bryan gets back from Afghanistan. We even uncovered a tree that was used to collect turpentine (we kept it)!