This weekend, I worked my butt off outside, and in the process I probably made our neighbours happy, and the mosquitos happier. I will be the first to admit that our property had become an eyesore. This is our fourth summer in this house, and just about every year since we moved in, I have removed shrubs in an effort to control the mosquitos that plague our area. In anticipation of some summer night fires in our back yard, I piled the yard waste along the side of our driveway. Our driveway abuts a woodlot, so this isn’t as obnoxious as it sounds, but nevertheless, for anybody who has a view of our driveway, this is what they have seen for the last few years. I’m sure it was just my imagination, but I could swear I heard a loud cheer as I carted away the last of the piles.
Adding fuel to the fire
In theory, keeping piles of dead branches around to burn in the fire pit made sense. However, considering we have only had a handful of fires since we’ve lived here, we had enough fuel to last about ten years. I finally decided that reclaiming our driveway was more important.
Saturday Morning, 7 AM
My day started bright and early as I fired up the weed whacker and tackled the front lawn. I hadn’t cut the front lawn for about 3 weeks and it was overdue. The back yard, on the other hand, hadn’t been cut since mid June. Some of it had grown about 2 feet high. Normally, it takes me in the neighbourhood of 2 and a half to three hours to cut the grass. This time around took about 5 hours. Keep in mind that we have about 2/3 of an acre and I use a standard gas mower….
A quick shower, a change of clothes, and then it’s back to work
Armed with yard waste bags and hand pruners, I tackled the yard waste pile. Most of the material was from cedar shrubs and small evergreens. I took one branch at a time, and cut it into smaller pieces to fit efficiently into the yard waste bags. I worked steady for a couple of hours, getting rid of about half the pile and filling about nine bags.
About an hour before the drop off station for our landfill was scheduled to close, I removed the seats from the minivan and loaded it with insulation-filled garbage bags from the demolitions I had done inside. The original plan was to get rid of three or four bags at a time with the regular garbage pickup, but this would have taken a couple of months. The total weight of this load was 120kg.
When I returned home, I went back to work on the yard waste. By this time, the mosquitos were more active and I was repeatedly attacked by a large, biting flying insect that I assume was a black fly, but can’t be certain as it was flying too fast for me to make a positive identification.
Frustrated by this unidentified kamikaze insect, and tired of being eaten alive by the other little bloodsuckers, I finally quit for the day.
Sunday Morning, 7AM
Funny thing about mosquitos, the little buggers are pretty active (and hungry) early in the morning. At least I had the good sense to wear blue jeans instead of shorts, so my legs didn’t get perforated by the flying hypodermic needles. I filled the remaining yard waste bags, went to the store, bought another bundle, and filled a couple more bags. In total, I had 15 bags, plus some tree trunks.
Our town allows for yard waste drop-off a couple days a week, and as luck would have it, Sunday is one of those days. It took two trips to get rid of everything, but our driveway is finally clear.
Not such an eyesore anymore
As I said, our neighbours must be thrilled. No more piles of demolition debris and scrap lumber. No more bags and bags of insulation. No more piles of yard waste. And, as an added bonus, we have more room for parking!