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As you can see, the cedars planted in front of the house had gotten a little out of control. The completely engulfed the front deck.

The deck itself was a little green and slippery. The trees blocked out most of the sun and kept it damp and shaded.

We also felt that they blocked a lot of light to the sliding glass doors in the living room and made the house darker. Our Dad's cautioned that they probably blocked out a lot of road noise too, but we felt the trees needed to come down.

So using my Dad's small chain saw, I just started whittling away at the brush. Some of the larger trunks I had to leave until I could get a larger chain saw.

Pretty soon, my chain saw was out of gas and we had a pretty insurmountable brush pile.

Looks better already, doesn't it? Sue's Mom and her husband Steve let us borrow their chipper and helped us for an afternoon. It took us Sue and I four more afternoons before we had everything cleared up.

A few weekends later, and Sue's Mom and Steve were back to help us tackle the remaining trees.

Steve cut down and limbed the remaining trees.

And Sue's Mom helped us to gather up all the brush into another large pile to be chipped.

We're getting there. A bit more brush to clear up and a rather large wood chip pile to move out back and Slave Camp will be over.

We gave Steve a couple of the larger logs to cut up into timber that he can use for furniture. Most of the medium sized stuff we set aside for fence posted for Sue's Grandparents farm.

And my brother Brett helped us to chip up all the rest.

While Brett and Sue finished chipping, I moved 16 wheel barrow loads of wood chips to the back of our lot.

Brett loved the wood chipper. Not.

After we finished up, Brett was covered with wood chips. He saw the leaf blower in the garage and wanted to use it to dust himself off.

All done for this year. We are not sure if we will plant back some smaller shrubs, install lattice or both. We are just happy with how it all came out.

It made a huge difference inside the house. The living room and dining room just seem so much brighter.

And it is nice to be able to see people pulling into our driveway now. We also don't think that the road noise in the house increased much. The next outside project will be to power wash and stain the deck, but that will have to wait until next spring.