ZOMGBACKYARD!!!!!!!!

I’m sorry; the world does not have enough exclamation points to cover how many I need to express my amazement and sheer, overwhelmed awe at how much work the gardner did today.

I MEAN, OMG.

I swear there will be pictures at some point. We hired this guy because he quoted a flat fee to do all the clearing of the backyard as well as the front yard. I came home to our entire left fence wall completely exposed and bare, with nothing between it and the stone walkway that Seppo built, with the exception of the apple tree, which had been rescued from a thick, overgrown thatch of blackberry bushes. The tree itself had been pruned into an actual tree shape, which, tee hee.

The loquat tree had been similarly pruned, the bamboo brought under control, and the entire area around it cleared. I can’t begin to describe how different the yard looks, even with piles of yardwaste that they couldn’t haul away today. Tomorrow, he’s coming back to finish the right side and presumably, the front. Or if he doesn’t finish, he’ll simply keep coming until everything is clear. OMG! Seppo just said, “In this way, he’s very much like the T-1000.” 😐

WOW. I mean, he didn’t just clear out the brush and bushes and prune trees; he brought everything that is not a tree down to the ground. I AM SO EXCITED. The sheer potential of our backyard has been re-exposed. Actually, I am not sure that we’ve ever seen things this clear, even when we first saw the house. We are definitely going to have this guy continue to come for maintenance.

This means that instead of working on trying to tame a tiny corner of the yard or feeling stress & guilt that we are not outside trying to do the same, we can actually just start using the backyard and doing crazy things like buying more sand/gravel/stones to build a FIRE PIT OF DOOM (with all the necessary safety precautions x 10000, since we do not want to have our house and/or Oakland go up in flames) or a stone patio. And we can do it slowly over time because we won’t have to worry about the growth coming back to hamper us, because we’ll just have a guy who magically makes that headache go away.

Seppo and I are both in agreement that while we wish we could have done this years ago, that it’s only in the last couple of years that we could have paid for this kind of thing, even though this guy works at a GREAT price, so we are both happy and have no regrets.

This, combined with the stairs means that this house is really starting to feel like a real home inhabited by real people. The stairs, in particular, are no longer a death trap! Since we no longer have any secret place in the backyard to hide bodies, it’s a good thing the stairs are fixed.

WOO HOO!