A different kind of demo

This weekend we started a whole other type of demo. Doesn't our yard look a little bare?

We ended up cutting all the forsythia to the ground. Before I start getting e-mails or comments about how on earth I could destroy a plant-there should be no worries. The forsythia should grow back. (and, I think started right away overnight). We should have done this years ago.

The demo was all in pursuit of a goal to restore our front fence. Right after we bought the house, we started with fence repairs. My father-in-law did a bunch of concrete patch work and we painted the concrete. It made a world of difference. Last year we did a quick paint job (needed to be repainted). We never got around though to the side facing the yard. With the forsythia, it was just too difficult to paint without painting half the plant. We also never sanded off the rust on the spokes, or painted them.

Hence, the cutting the forsythia to the ground. The powers that be (a.k.a. various garden sites) say that forsythia should be cut to the ground right after the blooming happens in the spring. Optimally, for pruning, you would cut 1/3 or the branches back to the ground every spring. Apparently, the yellow spring blooms only bloom on old branches, which is why you would do this. Because the forsythia just finished blooming, now is the time to do fence work. If not for that fact, we'd probably do this near the end of the summer. (At this time of the year I feel more like planting than demoing)

Both Glenn and I worked on using an angle grinder to sand all the spokes in the fence. (this takes a fair amount of time, FYI) Here's sort of how it looks before using the angle grinder:


And, after a bit of angle grinding:


We weren't able to finish, but I hope to get some sanding done during the week). Anyway, going forward we need to (1) finish angle grinding all the spokes (2) prime and paint the spokes black (3) power wash the fence (4) do some concrete patchwork on the fence (5) paint the fence. We are sort of in a rush against time-trying to get work done before the forsythia takes over again.