Evil brambles, take that.

We spent a few hours clearing blackberries today, even though my man really wanted to go Geocaching. I was very grateful that he seemed to really get into it, ripping those nasty vines from hell out of our fence.

But first, I took a picture of my work from last time. You can see the little brushpiles I made on my little path along the fence. You can see the fence, free of the bramble of doom!

Today we worked on an area of fence that is adjacent to our field. Our field only touches our property in one spot down by the ponds, because there is a treed empty lot between our house and our field for the most part. Down by the ponds will be Baasha's route to grass. More grass than he's ever called his own, I think (scary, I'll have to be very careful). Anyway, to build a gate between our land and the field, we need to be able to reach the fence. Yes, under all those blackberries is a fence.

First we had to cut a path TO the fence. This is the result of our effort - you can see the ground! And the big pile of evil we removed from that little patch.






My man took one side, I took the other, and we worked together, furiously, and it was SO MUCH FUN: ) It was like some sort of race, foot by foot, meter by meter, cutting a path along the fenceline together. It only took us 3 hours to clear the 20 meter section. Now you can stand down at the pond, and actually SEE the field. And vice versa.






At one point, these three ginormous white tailed deer galloped through the field on the other side of the ponds (not our field). One of them was leaping into the air every few strides, showing off. They were amazing. I was like, "Are those OUR DEER?" and I smiled as I thought to myself, "Will it always be so wonderful, seeing deer from my yard? Or will I begin to curse them as they eat our pears and poop too small for my manure fork?"

I saw Mr. S's footprints in the snow down by the ponds, I guess he had fed the fish today. Even better, there were tiny little CAT PAW PRINTS in the snow along the same path. It looked like a cat had followed him. I called and called, but no cat came. I am so excited, I hope I have a friendly neighborhood cat! I'm going to install lots of birdhouses and birdfeeders to tempt him to come visit. Oh, I hope he's friendly.

The sound of the water splashing is kind of mesmerizing. Did you know you can hear voices if you listen to splashing water? That is, if you listen long enough. (Oh yes, that is another huge patch of blackberries from another property line, these ones are threatening to crawl down into our ponds. NO way am I gonna allow that.

Finally. You can see the fence: ) This is the little path my man cleared between the two fencelines. I'm so impressed.






My path is cluttered with piles of brambles. He threw all his over the fence so his side stayed pretty. I'll fix that next week when I gather all the piles to make one mother pile. Then we'd like to rent a chipper and see if we can make the motherpile turn into tiny bits. (Does that work with blackberries?)







Here's my man, gloves off, looking accomplished. Also, here is the barbed wire we will be selling on Ebay. (Hey, this is Germany, people re-use EVERYTHING. We'll see how that goes..)

I can't wait to go back and make more dents in the wicked plant infestation!

UPDATE on Ebay Barbed Wire: At a party tonight, at least two people said "You can too sell barbed wire on Ebay. People will bid on it, just place the opening bid low cuz you're gonna ask them to remove it too." COOL.