So this past weekend, I managed (with the help of my father) to get some major yard work in the front yard done. We had planted monkey grass or Liriope under our maple tree shortly after we planted it. Then it had been several years since we had leveled the bricks around the tree (silly roots grow closer to the surface than other trees), and the monkey grass was also pushing the bricks around.

Before the leaves were removed and the monkey grass was thinned out.

So the above picture is showing one side of the tree with leaves still covering the grass (though the flowers had been coming up through both the leaves and the grass for at least two months) to work as a before picture.

Slowly starting to thin out the monkey grass

Now the other side is showing the work that I slowly had been making–basically I was removing the bricks, pulling up the monkey grass that was growing between the bricks to replant somewhere else in the yard, and then using the pruners to trim back all the other monkey grass around the tree.

My father went and got a couple bags of top soil so that we could start leveling off the bricks and have them in a nice circle around the tree. So our method was that I was removing the monkey grass for transplanting and trimming the rest of the monkey grass, while he worked to re-level all the bricks around the tree (he even had to go back to the store to get a single brick due to having to take the circle out a little further).

The pruned monkey grass and leveled bricks

And then finally after about four hours of work, we managed to get everything re-leveled and I have two topsoil bags full of money grass to now replant somewhere in the yard over the next few weekends (I think Sunday is suppose to be nice).