Reclaiming The Back Of The Backyard

Now that the railroad is no longer running past our house, I thought I'd start cleaning up the mess behind my backyard, which includes a portion of my property. The section of track that went past our house was a spur that served the mill and people have thrown trash along the tracks for the past century.

It still looks pretty bad but I have piled a bunch of the brush up into a couple of piles, which I'll probably stack behind the vacant house next door to me, to let it compost there, and I've bagged up a couple of bags of trash, which included rusting tin cans and an unopened bottle of Busch beer, which has been there for who knows how long. The cap is rusted but still holding.

As I move brush and trash out of the way, I'll rake it and seed it. I have already cut several trees back there and a couple more have fallen, so I'll need to get the chainsaw out soon to take care of that. I could probably thin out a few more trees, too.

I was going to post some pictures but, for some reason, I am unable to upload them and don't have any more time to mess with it. I'll come back and post pictures later.

 

I live in Maine. It's in the high 70s here.

 

Here's the Busch bottle. It's aged beer.

 

This is the area between my yard and the tracks. As I said, it's still a mess but was worse a few days ago. I should probably sell that ladder. Twenty years ago, I could set it up, fully extended, by myself. Today, I can't even lift it.

 

Yeah, Ella supervises. She's not sure that patch of grass belongs there. It's been about a decade or more since the mill closed. After that, there would be a train every now and then, hauling something or another from the mill site. However, about a year ago, and again a couple of months ago, there was a train at about 3:00 in the morning, which led me to consider that someone was probably removing something from the site that they weren't authorized to remove. There is still some litigation going on related to the bankruptcy.

 

I have been thinking about blackberries, after clearing the junk trees out of there. That might keep people from taking a shortcut across my yard.

 

Hey, the high-70s is mighty hot. I have a fan on and everything.