Spring Cleaning- Outdoor Edition!

These little crocus flowers are my favorite. They randomly popped up in the middle of the lawn a couple years back and make me smile every time I see them.

Spring might not officially be here yet, but I’m jumping feet first into spring cleaning. Outside, that is! We rented a dumpster to finally get rid of all of the excess branches and broken tree limbs stacked randomly around our property. Every year I say that this will be the year that I take a half an hour each Saturday to take a load of branches to the local ecological facility. And every year I go like twice and life happens.

So this year I bit the bullet and rented a dumpster to get it all gone in one massive go. Yesterday was Day 1 and the dumpster is over half full. I’m hoping that the two days of beautiful weather are enough to clear up and clear out. The good thing is I’ve been slowly working through the mess each summer, stacking and clearing what I could, which has been helpful in getting rid of it.

It was great in the beginning to have this place to dump all our branches and whatnot, but it’s become a safe haven for a lot of creatures. Since we have a lot of other places around here for them to live it’s time to evict them from our yard as best we can. Between the groundhog digging a home in the middle, bunnies living in the garden, and snakes (!) we’re happy to see it go. And I won’t even go into the mice that I’m sure hang out in here, since I can say we’ve officially been mouse-free all fall and winter.

The other place I’m really happy to clear is behind the garage. There are pallets stacked with wood on top that a groundhog has used as a front door for years. I’ve seen that same groundhog ransack ours and the neighbor’s garden and scamper right back to his home under the pallets. We keep the lawn tractor back there in the warmer months and I’m always afraid something is going to come running. I jump at any sense of movement back there. And as if that’s not enough of a reason, we’ve had a fox around lately who seems to like hanging back there.

I cleared everything out back there a week ago, just because I wanted to get it done before all the critters woke for the spring. Yes, I seriously Googled “do groundhogs wake up from hibernation angry” just in case. I also made my hubby stand by in case I was attacked. He thought I was ridiculous on all fronts but was in no way surprised. I’m happy to report that while there were two groundhog entrances under those pallets, there were no visitors during the clearing. I’ve walked by daily since then too and no new entrances have popped up, which is good. I’m fairly certain my neighbor trapped this particular groundhog last year and released him in the woods a few miles away. It’s important that after a creature like this is relocated that you fill in the hole before something else moves into it.

Time for me to get back to the grind of Day 2 and finish filling that dumpster! Then I get to do the really fun stuff and plant, plant, plant!

Here’s one of the groundhog holes. They pretty much collapsed as soon as I uncovered them because it’s so dry under there and our soil is pretty sandy. The pallets really helped keep it structurally sound.