So embarrassing...

Without knowing it, we turned into "those neighbors..."

After college, I bought an inexpensive 100 year old home near campus and lived in it for about a year before deciding to rent it out. The house has two separate units inside, one on the downstairs and one on the upstairs.  For the past six months we've been renting out the main floor to my two younger brothers:  Chris and Zack.

I've been asking my brother Chris how things are going at the house, how the grass is doing, etc, and he had said everything was going great.  He brings over the rent checks when we all go to my parents house on Sunday, and I hadn't thought much about it.  Kevin or I hadn't actually been over to the house in a month or two, but my brothers said everything was going well, and the yard was ok, we thought we were good to go.  When Kevin went over there on Friday, this is what he found....

What?!!  Yeah sure, maybe the grass wasn't overgrown, but the normally tame bushes around the house had turned into a complete jungle.  And not everyone is a fan of vines on the house, but I've always sort of liked them.  That being said, these things vines were totally out of control.  Oh, and notice that small tree on the left side of the picture.  Yeah... we haven't planted any trees.  The biggest weed I have ever seen.  Let's just say it took a saw to cut it down.

So after almost four hours of back breaking work by both Kevin and I, here's what we had:

Still a ton of work to be done, but at least the house doesn't look like it's getting taken over by a rainforest.  So embarrassing.  The neighbor next door pulled up to his house and saw us working.  I can only imagine what he was saying to himself.  I'm guessing it was something like, "...about time assholes."  We worked for about three and a half hours before I knocked on the door and asked my brother Chris for more trash bags.  I told him we were taking care of the yard, and he's like, "what's wrong with the yard?"  Note to self, Chris likes living in a jungle.

We ended up cutting back a bunch of the hostas that were growing on the side of the house, but I felt bad about taking out so many flowers, so I saved a few to bring home.  My back is killing me, but on the bright side I have some pretty flowers to look at.