At least I was outside

It was a glorious weekend in South Carolina- blue skies, no humidity, a pleasant breeze.  However, we spent part of Saturday doing one of my least favorite things: yardwork.  We have these bushes that line our front walk, and no matter how many times we've trimmed them, they come back fast and healthy.  Just last month we cut them back and they've already taken over spilling onto the sidewalk again.

I forgot to take a "before" shot, we've already started on the middle bushes at this point.  Just picture the whole row looking like the ones on the right side in front of the porch.

Annoyed with how high maintenance these bushes are, we have debated digging them out.  That would be an even bigger pain than frequently cutting them back though.  Instead, for now, we decided to give them a much more drastic "chop back" than we have the last few times.  Our hope is by making them smaller and farther away from the sidewalk they will be easier to keep under control.

As Matt chopped, cut, and sawed away (both modern electric hedge trimmers and old fashioned tools such as an axe were used), I was on bag duty.

I told Matt to call me "Bagger Vance."  He didn't.  I called him "Paul Bunyan", but he never responded to it.

I strongly disliked it.  Every limb, branch, leaf, and twig that fell from the bushes had to be picked up and bagged up so that the trash people will take it away.  This means I had to bend over a lot.  Why yes, I am quite sore today, thanks for asking.

How many 70 gallon lawn & leaf bags did I stuff?  Nine.

I'm being a bit dramatic.  It really wasn't that bad.  Together we got it done in a few hours and the whole time we both kept saying how great it felt to be outside on such a beautiful day.  I just realized I did not take an "after" shot of our hard work.  Blog fail.  If I wasn't feeling so tired from both the bush whacking of yesterday and the two hour mountain bike ride of today, I'd get up to go take a picture real quick.  I'll just describe it for you- the bushes are about a foot farther back than they were, and they look kind of sad since there aren't leaves on the front side of them anymore.  Don't feel sorry for them though, I bet by next week they'll be green, lush, and all over the place again.