“Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who decided to stand their ground.”

All I can say about the above quote is no freaking kidding- in regards to the nuts deciding to stand their ground . I was soooo  excited to get the backyard cleared.  A month and a half ago our backyard looked like this :

Now I understand this was before everything starting blooming, but this was a couple months ago. 

NOW after everything has starting blooming our backyard looks like this: 

To be fair, we knew the area towards the middle of the picture would look like this. But the rest, that all sprouted up in the last 2 months. 

It's harder to see in this picture- but there are little green oak leaves coming up every couple feet. This is the area that I spent hours pulling up all the little saplings. 

 I know things grow quickly in the spring, but this is ridiculous. We're going to mow all the sprouts down and keep on top of them to try to keep them from coming back. We're hoping when we get to the point of planting grass seeds the grass will help smother the little oak trees. But I've also decided that oak trees are the rabbits of the tree world.

Don't get me wrong, I love oak trees. They are very important to me religion wise. Oak trees symbolize the half of the year where the sun is growing strongest. They are also a symbol of protection and prosperity (depending on your beliefs and how to treat the trees). They are simply sacred to me. However, I would also like to be able to use our backyard as a yard, not just as an area to grow brush. Even the stumps that I had sawed down are sprouting again. *sigh* oh well. It's better than it was.

In other backyard news. We have a giant ant hill that we're slowly working on getting rid of. That is not so fun. However! I also found out we have at least one chipmunk! This made me ridiculously happy!

This is our chipmunk friend, I've named him Dale.

Here is Dale again. 

The day I saw him I went around singing the little bit I know of the "Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers" Theme song- much to the amusement- maybe even annoyance- of my co-workers. So that is how I will leave you!