Ephemera: Way Back Machine

I was going through looking at some old photos and came across a bunch of the pictures taken of the property and houses as we were cleaning it/them up. It was sort of fun, so I thought I would post a trip through memory lane.

This is my tree... I love this tree... I think this tree is probably why I bought the property. This photo was in fact that photo I took of it the first day we came to look.

It has been trimmed since then, but I asked that they do as little as possible to just make it safe. It actually makes me a little sad that I live in the big house now, since that means I do not have my tree... lol...

The picture was taken from the side of the big house facing the small one... the leaves in the upper left corner were from the black walnut that grew between the houses. Unfortunately, that tree had to be removed. That was a sad day.

The picture on the right was taken a little while after the first one... it is of the rest of the yard, under the big tree as if you were standing about where the cars are in the first picture.

I thought I would regret the tree(s) once the leaves started falling and I had to do a lot of clean-up, but I actually look forward to fall and get a little impatient when they do not fall off fast enough... I mulch them up and use them to cover the garden for the winter. Along with a layer of spring grass mulch, they make a great erosion control for the rains and add a lot of nutrients to the soil in the spring when I till them in.

The two pictures above are of the front yard for the picture to the left. This picture was also taken the first day we looked at the property. The truck and the shelter are not there now and the garage has been redone.

What is not visible are the old broken windows on the side of the house and the true 'beauty' of the garage just does not shine through. I say that in all humor. The garage actually was leaning significantly to the right (facing) and it was not as solid as it looks in this picture.

As you go around the back of the garage, you get to see a great view of the alien species which has come to earth to take over... they disguise themselves as black berry bushes:

The blackberries in this picture were beaten back but not concored. My tenants did not keep on top of it, so many of these have returned. I have actually been working on them again, but am going slow since they are currently full of berries. I figure I might as well get as much jam out of the evil bastards as I can before I KILL KILL KILL... erm... get rid of them.

A little to the left of that, on the other side of the blackberry mound, is what was originally part of the the horse paddock. I ended up moving the fence to open that section up to the backyard of the little house to use as a garden, but getting through the blackberries was a real trial... for all of us.

Keep going left from this point and you get to the gate into the paddock itself.

It was at this gate that we put the new fence across, effectively cutting the paddock in half. Once we got the blackberries knocked back, of course... interestingly enough (at least to me), is that the blackberries actually made sort of a natural line at the logical point to put in the new fence.

If you can squeeze in through that gate, if you turn towards the garage, you get this view from other half of the paddock...

what is now the actual paddock, now that the other part was turned into garden.

Turn a little to the left and you are looking straight to the back of the smaller house.
This was where we started clearing this out.