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The weekend after Thanksgiving William and I started on our big winter project. The objective is to clear out a jungle mass that makes up one corner of the property.

This is the "before" view.

The jungle in questions starts at the far left of the image above and continues to behind the barrel on the right. It's a distance of about 70 yards. The dirt road that leads to our three neighbors' houses is immediately on the other side of the jungle, and then open farm fields beyond that. The jungle certainly provides a lot of privacy, and during the summer it keeps every Tom, Dick, and Harry from being able to snicker at our pathetic vegetable garden as they drive by. That privacy is nice, but it just looks like hell. Especially during the summer when all of the vines are leafed out. This photo is the winter-view which is at least a third less dense.

At the core of the mass to the left are two old cedar trees. During the summer you can't see them at all. Everything else is storm-mangled cherry trees, Russian olives, and grapevines as big around as your head. The plan is to remove everything but the two cedars, put in a three-board farm fence running all the way around that corner, and plant some new trees. So in about twenty years we'll have our privacy back, but it'll look pretty instead of like a giant mess. It's one of those situations where it has to look worse before it can look better.

Since Thanksgiving weekend, William and I have maybe worked four weekend days on this project and we've made some good headway. The view at the end of a full-day yesterday looked like this.

This photo is shot from a different angle, but you can start to see the cedar trees, especially the taller one on the right. (We've named them Laurel and Hardy for obvious reasons.) The cedars are in better shape than I expected after being consumed for decades. They're not gorgeous, but they should fill out once freed.

In the process we're creating a mammoth brush pile. For scale, you can see William sitting on the left.

So, that's what we've been up to around here! -- Bill