More Chopping!

This was the sad state of the shop and old single-car garage this morning.  See the vines? 

Keith asked me to pull them down, please. 

They were also growing up the side of the larger of the two storage buildings. 

Folks, we have not lived there now for almost six months, and the place was slowly going back to 

nature.  You couldn't even open the shop doors at this point. 

Do I need to tell you that wasps were flying in and out of the foliage, and I 

probably saw 50 fly INTO the shop through the door. 

This area, on the left, is where Chris was stung so badly a month ago. 

So...

I proceeded slowly. 

I used the wasp spray, too... spraying where I was going to work.  

I started with the vines... and chopped them at the roots.  I pulled a few down, but 

you will see in a minute what is left. 

Now you can see the front of the shop.  One of our last tasks will be to rebuild the 

door on the left, it has rotted out. 

All that stuff had to be dragged across the yard. 

Do you see where the roof is wet along the edge?  I would spray, step back 20 steps (to the chair you can't see, sitting in the shade of the old walnut) and wait for the wasps to die down. 

I cut a ton of saplings out of here.  

The green on the right is intertwined with an old fence that 

has rolled on itself, and lots of bristly greenbrier.  I'm going to 

spray it. 

I was able to loosen some of the vines you can barely see on the wall... but 

I left the rest for another day.  Too many wasps! 

This is the old walnut tree... see how few walnuts are on it this year? 

Here's the west side of the house... I showed you the east yesterday.  Brandon will finish off the north end this weekend, then we'll go to town on painting, the deck railings and windows.  We'll put up new trim, too. 

We're going to have to get a dumpster to haul off the C and D. 

I haven't been able to show you this for about 3 years now.  A young farmer west of Tongie plants 40 acres to sunflowers.  The last two years, he has planted soybeans on this acreage, but this year, he put it back into sunflowers.  He sells the seed.   People come from miles around to take pictures of it, and Chris and I stopped for a few minutes on our way to Garnett this morning to take a few. 

The People.  Coming from miles around.  Seriously. 

See down the road?  A guy down there is renting his front pasture for parking for 2.00, but 

we were so early, we were shocked to find people there already. 

We found a roadside spot. 

Someone was flying a drone over the fields... how cool!  I'm sure they got great pictures. 

People actually wade into the fields to take pictures... some bring ladders... some bring very expensive equipment. 

Kids can get lost in there, and I'm not kidding.  Chris had never seen these fields blooming, and he was very surprised. 

On and on and on... wow! 

Tired tonight... from two days of hard work. 

More tomorrow!