Clearing the Backyard, Pt 3

We're slowly working towards clearing the backyard and today I feel like I made a pretty decent dent. I decided my issue was that I wasn't focused enough when I was working. Instead of focusing on one specific section I would bounce around all over the backyard which meant that I wasn't really getting much done and what I did get done really wasn't that noticeable. So today I took a different approach. I decided to focus on the part of the yard that if you're looking out our backdoor is closest to our house on right.
Before I started to work it looked like this

As you can see, lots of leaves, little pine trees, holly trees and I don't know what type of trees but I'm guessing Oak because we have a lot of those in our yard. The hardest thing is the fact that the leaves prevent you from seeing what all is there and in need of clearing, but there are too many baby trees and dead branches to successfully just rake. So to clear it you have to alternate between trimming off the long branches, stacking those, digging up the trees that you can dig up, raking and then resorting to sawing some of the bigger "saplings" off. The sawing was done whenever the sapling was actually growing out of the roots of the bigger trees. Not the ideal situation but we're not going to be cutting down a bunch of the older trees- we like those, but the stumps were a hazard because they stuck up above the dirt line and I'm a clutz so they had to go. After working for 4-5 hours- with a small lunch break/oh hey I'm gonna put my audiobook on my phone and listen to that while working -- the end result for today was this :

I'll admit that while I was working in the back I really felt like I wasn't truly making a dent. I think that is largely due to the HUGE pile of leaves we have that need to get bagged and taken to the dump but....I just didn't feel like bagging all those leaves today. I bagged about 3 bags worth after I ate and went back to clearing. Since we bought our house I really do understand the appeal of leaf burning now because with all of our trees, raking and bagging it's a giant pain in the tukus. ANYWAY, there are still a few little saplings (more like twigs that look like they are sticking out of the ground) that need to be pulled up, and there are some of the bigger roots/trunks that we need to figure out how we're going to get them out of the ground, but all in all I think I made a pretty awesome sized dent in clearing the backyard. I really do need to bag up all the leaves though......

You can't tell by looking at it since I"m about 5 feet off the ground at our backdoor but the pile is ginormous... and a lot of the leaves are damp from the rain/snow mixture we got a few days ago. In fact the front of the pile still had snow on it since the pile was started last time I worked in the backyard.






We also now have more twigs and branches- excellent kindling-- that I will work on trimming to a usable size and stacking up. That will then go to my parents or be saved for when we get a fire pit type thing.
This is the one I want....

Anyhoo that is it for now. Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!

~)O(~ Elfie ~)O(~