Yard work for stucco

I don't know how people who are not DIYers are able to manage a project like this. I spent 2 hours today cleaning up the weeds and growth by the wall between us and our neighbors. This wall will be sandblasted and stuccoed, so I wanted all the undergrowth cleared so the stucco could go down to the ground. I guess a non DIYer would have to hire a landscaper to clean it up before the stucco guy started. It felt really good to do this - there's a big difference already, and it motivates me to add in a little work on the front yard to my weekly yard work. We do want to do some sort of temporary fix in the near future until we can tackle it properly out there.

Here is a before shot:



And the after shot:

You're probably thinking "why did she do that, it looks even worse?" Well, the picture doesn't show how bad it really looked. It was just a hodgepodge of plants randomly mixed with some weeds. None of these plants is staying in our landscaping, so they all had to go anyway. I like starting with a nice clean backdrop of the wall and working forward. There was a lot of debris and weeds at the bottom (like a foot of weeds just piled up).

The contractor called me today and we are on for Friday for sandblasting. We should have new stucco by the middle of next week. I am so excited!

I have to say that even though our new contractor is better than the prior ones we worked with, I am beginning to get frustrated with him. I have to mention that C called this months ago when I said I liked him. C said "give it time, you'll hat him too." I don't hate him yet, but he has been blowing me off and hasn't been very prompt in scheduling. He and the landscaper are also not meeting with me about the backyard until after the stucco is done. This is really frustrating because while we are in a holding pattern on the stucco, I wanted to nail down the deck design and scope of work for them and have them ready to start ASAP once the stucco is done. I didn't want to wait until the stucco is done and then another week or two while we coordinate schedule and then a few more weeks while we nail down a contract. At this point, it will be September before they start and there is no reason for it.