Backyard? Back Jungle! Show me the light!

You can see the large wattles and blackwoods over hanging house

Now to call this a back garden at this stage would be folly.  It's unusable. Dark, damp and dingy. No light gets in our clothes line an old hills hoist is unable to spin, it hits shrubs and trees. These were the first to go. The aim with this stage of the garden renovation was NOT to clear fell or clear the garden of all the trees which make the hills such a  lovely place to live. No I love trees. But I needed our back garden to be a place which could and WOULD be used.  This needed some light and sun to get to into our back garden. My vision is to create a back garden farm! I missed living on the land. I had a realisation I have land. I want to make the most of it. I want veggie gardens, orchards, various fruit trees, (Olives, figs, apples, pears, lemons, limes, avocado's, kiwi fruit! Chooks. All this needs sunlight. Soooo read on.

This is one of the small Black Woods
under the huge Mountain Gums 

Think huge mountain ash and mountain grey gums towering tall, with 4 huge, massive black wattles growing underneath blocking out any light getting through the upper canopy & overhanging our house and neighbours. Big Blackwoods, these large trees about 3 of them meant our back garden was useless as a garden space. I learnt (after the fact) that you can remove any tree or shrub with in 3 metres of the boundary. So I started cutting down trees to  let the light in. I was able to do most of it myself, but an arborist was brought in to chop down a large Backwood towering above the kitchen blocking light into out kitchen. This was home to a few possums which thumped onto our roof each night. More on possums later. So with the balckwood gone along with all the Ivy the arborist climbed one of the large Mountain Gums and removed a large, LARGE limb hanging over our lovely neighbours house. It must be gone!  All the foliage & Ivy was mulched to be used on garden beds and paths. All the wood was cut and spit (by me, by hand), then wheel barrowed up the slope and stacked behind our shed in the back garden, to be dried then used in our fire to warm us in winter.  So yes some trees have gone, but we still have huge Gum trees to remind us why we live in the hills and now we have a sunny back yard which we can now use to grow food and live in. And with a little baby girl on the horizon (due in early Nov this year) when older she and me can share our living back garden farm.