Down with the skag bush! and other yard work

When we moved in, the backyard wasn't terrible, but it was sort of unremarkable. Unless you count the previous inhabitant's ability to put trees is really terrible places.

As you can see in this shot from the listing, there's a giant bush in the middle of the yard, which seems to me is not the best place for a bush. Plus, when we had our trees inspected, the guy told is it was really just a type of ivy that was likely growing out of an old tree stump. Needless to say, it wasn't doing us or the yard any favors, so we took it out. 

But then, with that ugliness out of the way, we were free to examine the rest of the yard with clearer eyes and discover that there was also a baby pine in the back that we didn't really want around for the long haul. (Matt is looking at it in the picture above). So with some help from Jimmy, that went too:

And of course, once you get the tree down you have the stump to contend with. Not only did we have the old pine stump but there was another stump from a tree long gone nearby. Luckily, the pine stump was pretty small and the old stump was, well, really old and rotted. So they both came out pretty easy.

But what were we to do with all the wood? Well, build a fire nest, of course! With skag bush out of the way, we had a large ungrassy area in the middle of the yard and a ton of wood to burn. So one night after work Matt and I moved some of the rocks from around the front of the house and created our very own giant fire nest, which we of course tested out with great success the next weekend.