Destruction for Palmettos: The Clean-up Begins

When it comes to the yard, I am the guy who mows.  Due to the size of the yard I have a riding mower.  It's a great thing to have since I live in Florida, and the grass and plants are always growing.  The mower can take care of the grass.  When it comes to the everything else, a guy has to get in there by hand.  Again, I'm in Florida and everything grows pretty much all of the time. 

This leads me to the back yard.  When the house was built, there was small batch of palmettos on the back right side of the property.  Over the years these palmettos have gotten out of control.  I try to drive by on the mower, and they do their best to cut me as I go by.  I cut them back every so often, but after twenty-some years, they have gotten massive. 

This also lead to another problem.  Since they were so thick, anything and everything that fell in there just piled up.  This includes, but is not limited to:

1. Dead leaves.  Mostly from the oak trees above.
2. Dead palm fronds.  (I could literally knock them down with my rake.)
3. Dead tree branches.
4. A huge number of pine needles.
5. Small trees that somehow made it through the mess.  (Camphor and Cherry trees.)
6. Garbage that was thrown off the road.
7. Vines.
8. More vines.
9. Vines that manage to make it all the way up into the oak trees.
10. Vines that have roots that stretch at least forty feet.

So to make a long story short, I took some time out of every Saturday for the last three Saturdays to clean it up.  I only had six large garbage cans, so I would clean until I ran out of cans.  Here's the "after" picture.

I really should have had a "before" picture.  You could have seen that the debris was piled over a foot high.  Also, do you see that utility pole in the center?  That's the electric pole for the neighbors.  So I had a fire hazard on my hands.  That's one reason I really wanted to clean this up.  Also, snakes.

I'm not afraid of snakes.  In fact, I like them.  But there are other people in the house who are terrified of snakes.  So that's one reason I wanted to show these pictures.  Note the nice little holes in these next two pictures.

I know those aren't the best pictures, but I could only get in so far.  The important part is that, I had two places that looked like where small animals could hide away. 

Here's what the palmettos looked like from a closer view.

It's not a bare forest floor, but it's not piled up deep either.  It's where it should be.  Honestly, this should have been done years ago, but I finally got sick and tired of it, and just went ahead and took care of it.  Hopefully I won't have to do this for a few more years.