Battle of the Weed Forest: Part 2

In the continuing battle against our wild, unkept yard, last weekend we reclaimed another patch of land from the vines and pricker bushes.  Located in the back left corner of our fence, the vines and such created a decent looking patch of greenery in the warmer months.

See the patch of green in the back corner?  Past the azaleas.

However, once fall came and the leaves died, it was obvious all we really had was a nasty patch of pricker bushes.  Our plan is to one day landscape all along the fence line with little beds in each corner, so to start that, the strange pricker triangle had to go.

How it looked last weekend.

Strange vine growing up a tree.  And a board.  Not sure where that came from.

We raked and raked... and raked up all the leaves and then went to town hacking down the vines, cutting down some spindly trees, throwing large branches over the fence, and digging up stumps.  Once it had been cleared, we found a bunch of odd things like a mound of cement and random clumps of cement, a few old bricks, and a whole line of cinder blocks.  I'm pretty certain there are bodies buried in our yard.

The line of cinder blocks and some bricks.

Why are there so many cinder blocks in our yard??

After just a few hours, we were left with this... barren patch.  Mostly barren, I should say.  We're still working on the leaf removal.

I guess it doesn't look like much of an improvement right now, but it does make our fenced in space look so much larger.  In spring, we're hoping to plant a little shade garden with some hostas, lilies, ferns, etc.

Oh, and a special shout-out to our best little helper, Chewie.  He was extremely helpful in digging up roots and carrying away little stumps once I had ripped them from the earth.  Of course, they're now scattered throughout the backyard...

Look at those little dogs!