The Deforrestation Continues

The pace of clearing the invasives has slowed.  I estimate that about 90% of the buckthorn and honeysuckle have been removed.  All the ash leaves have fallen and the most of the maple leaves have turned and have been falling.

From deck looking northward toward great wall of buckthorn.
The pot contains this year's vegetable garden.

The buckthorn leaves of course have remained mostly green, but many of them have fallen, and the berries are beginning to drop easily when the branches are shaken. So it's too late to avoid spreading the seeds, but the presence of the berries still allows quick identification of the invasive tree. So there's still some incentive to keep lopping and sawing before everything is bare.

The great wall of buckthorn (our huge brush pile along the northern border) has gotten almost too high to toss branches onto. I may have to scale the monster and do some stomping before I clear much more brush. I predict that the heavy snows this winter will help to lower the brush level considerably. Catie suggested that we could use the pile as a sledding hill this winter.