Clearing the driveway

 

Finally, it was time to clear out the driveway. We felled most of the trees while my mom and dad was visiting. There was a couple trees left at the corner of the barn. My neighbour very kindly felled those for me and came with farm equipment and removed several trailers of branches from around the driveway. It was a huge help for me.

I started raking and pulling weeds. The driveway was covered with years worth of leaves that were turning to mulch. The idea was to remove all the saplings and mulch, and uncover any junk that might be hiding under there. 

The currants were also ripening, I like to have berries and honey with plain yoghurt.

It took many days to finish the project. It was slow work to remove the thick layer of mulch, intertwined with little trees. There were too many wheelbarrow loads to to count. Every now and then I encountered some trash, like pieces of metal, nails or disintegrated pallets. There was an old chopping stump covered in plastic, which the ants had made into their habitat. But really, there was less rubbish that I initially feared. 

This is what it started to look like! 

The view from the house also started looking much more open. I removed some more of the wispy maples in the foreground. They were growing on a pile, that I feared to be more trash...but luckily, it was just soil, covered with some plastic. I think I will use it to fill a dip in the landscape, next to the big oak.

I left this decorative tree, and removed dry branches from it to spruce it up. I don't recognise the species. 

I couldn't stop admiring the results! It took a year to get to this point and I wanted to take in all the progress. I really like sitting in front of the barn. There's shade and privacy, you're protected from being seen from the road. You can see the whole garden and look out over the field. I think I will experiment with putting a dining table here. It was supposed to be a parking space...but it's too nice of a space to use just for parking. I want to keep it an open space, that can be used for more than one purpose.

- L