Lumbering Along

When you combine a father, his son, the son's wife and her sister, plus a pickup truck, a pick-ax, an ax, two shovels, a rake and a heavy-duty chain, what do you get? Some serious unconventional tree removal service.
Over the past two days any combination of the above items/people brought about a small but visible difference in the landscape of our property. I'm not one for gardening or anything, but I do enjoy the accomplishment of outdoor projects. We had a line of mimosa trees at the back of our property and chose to remove them before they became a bigger problem (plus, they attract the "white gnats" that irritate my allergies). For those of you who don't know what a mimosa is, know that is a good shade provider with it's fern-like branches, but uncontrollable (roots and branches). Preparing our land for future fence options, we needed to remove these trees. So, we broke our backs trying to get several sets of them (you never know if it is one or more trees until you pull out the roots).
Of course, after this adventure was complete, Eric and Susan took on some other trees (not sure what kind, but they are pretty deciduous trees). The two of them hacked them down with an ax and shoved them over, clearing out a large area behind the pines who falsely depict a back border. We will replant trees along the fence but will do fruit trees to kill two birds with one stone so to speak.
Now, if we could just be lumberjacks enough to take down the 15 pine trees that we REALLY want gone, we'd have a huge piece of property to work with!! Plus, we could finally grow grass throughout the property. (Just as a side note, pine straw is quite the commodity down here. I'll take cedar chips, though, thank you!) Pine is just so acidic and I'd rather not have them continually shed all over my yard!
What a great way to finish out Eric's vacation, right?