Brooke here:

I’ve heard it said that landscaping is two steps backward for every one step forward, but I’d bump that up to a decent-paced skip to be safe.  We have almost two acres of land, and these were allowed to go all but fallow for a couple of decades.  As we are dead-center on a street with some very attractive established landscaping,  it’s no wonder that every neighbor we’ve met has been thrilled that we’re going to try and bring the yard back from the edge of wilderness.

In addition to the tree removal, we’ve started trimming hedges.  We started with the hedges on the side of the house as soon as we bought the property, as they had been allowed to grow over the power lines.

 

 

Since we bought the house in June, we couldn’t do any serious work on the hedges.  They needed to be slashed down to sticks, but a summer full of 90-degree days plus the cutting stress would have killed them.  So for the time being, they were trimmed down away from the power lines.

 

 

In late September when the weather had cooled and we were finally getting some rain, I grabbed the clippers and butchered the hedge.

 

 

It will take them a good  three to five years to fill in again, and until then we get to live with these:

 

 

Ugly, yes, but necessary.  I’ll keep trimming them down until there’s a good thick hedge directly under the window line in… 2014?  Another reason to hope we survive the Aztec Calendar Reboot, I suppose, and the living room now has some amazing midday light for the houseplants, so no regrets other than they are now oh-so-sad-looking.  I’ll make sure they get enough water to come back strong in the spring, and hopefully at this time next year the progress shot will show how they have grown out a bit.