There is a treasure trove out there in the yard, if one only stops to look for it.
We live on two acres of wooded property. Some of it is overgrown. Okay, a lot of it is overgrown. When you live in the woods, you tend to live and let live. Even the poison ivy feels comfortable here. It tells its friends, and we get some new crops spouting up each year.
Still, there is only so much of this overgrown plant stuff that a former city girl can take. And so, with my limited skills (hey, I can smack a handball with the best of them, and my zipping through a crowded city block on the way to catch a taxi are legendary), I took to hacking some of the stuff to the side of our long driveway. Poison ivy be darned, I was going to tame some of the jungle, um I mean woods.
It hasn’t been easy. I just learned how to use a hoe a few days ago, and so this is the only tool in my arsenal. With unclaimed fury (or at least quite a bit of swiss hazelnut coffee), I have been setting about to attack and attack. Weeds, small trees, chocking vines, it is all coming down. Tree stumps the width of the Chrysler building, well I give them a good glare.
So where does the frugal part come in all of this? Two ways. The first is that I am saving us the cost of hiring a lawn (woods) and landscaping specialist, minus the cost of bandaids, and the second is that I am discovering some new plants lost in all of the tangle, such as wild strawberries and large jack-in-the-pulpits. Some large bush that I thought was a weed, now opened up to the sun, reveals itself with delicate white flowers. Bonus landscaping.