First read Tallamy’s book, Natures Best Hope. Insects are your friends. Rotting wood is your friend. Then download the app Plantnet and start iding every plant, weeds snd all, in your yard. Then you can formulate a plan to eradicate, control or encourage each. Every plant has a different method. A scorched earth approach is less efficient and much more costly in my experience. Your mown leaves are orobably best left on the lawn to obviate need for fertilizer. They wont suppress weeds. Disturbing the soil is what triggers the emergence of new weeds so cutting will trump pulling. Perennials must be pulled.

Too bad about the trees. I don't know what weeds you have but they must be very tall to not see over.

Really the only way to enjoy the area is to plow or mow everything then use leaf mulch as you say.

Wildflower seed in early Spring is a good idea but you would have to skip the mulch after you plow or mow. Make it a pretty meadow.

Get pest control first for wasps so you can get in there in the first place. For ticks you can't keep them out.

And it's piles of old logs and sticks that attract critters.

I dissent from every piece of advice offered by tracefloyd. Sorry!

Why and what do you recommend?

By clearing everything I meant weeds, dead brush, logs and dead trees. No wildflowers either? And leave the weeds too? I'm not sure why someone dissents. I suppose you could let the area go natural and it will heal on it's own. We live in a wooded area and around here people make clearings all the time. And mow the weeds.

Now that I see photos...is this just one spot on the property that's wooded? LIke just one corner? I see some grass...are there already open areas on the lot somewhere?

If this is a focal stand of trees? If so, just make the area presentable from your vantage point and plant flowering shrubs in front of them.

Yes there is lawn from our backyard, the wooded land is tucked all the way to the back of our property, just the wooded land is like 1/4 acre.

I honestly don't see a problem. Your yard looks beautiful.

I would post pictures of these "weeds" on the Name That Plant forum. Some of them look like saplings which might be good native species, or wildflowers. There's also something which might be poison ivy. If you have, or can get, a sturdy string trimmer or brush cutter the taller stuff could be cleared pretty easily in a short time. Just run over it a few times a year where you want to walk. There is no once and for all solution to keeping the area tidy. It needs regular maintenance. Btw, if you remove all fallen sticks, timber, plants and stumps you will badly deplete the biodiversity of your yard and you'll see far fewer birds and other creatures on your property. "Cleaning" woods is not a great idea.

Weeds love bare ground. Love love love it. Have you heard the saying, ”Nature abhors a vacuum”?

Bare ground will not stay bare for long. You MUST mow, weed eat, or brush hog regularly, or it will get away from you in the blink of an eye. Don’t let it go more than 10 days or 2 weeks without attention, especially now that presumably there are weed seeds in existence.

I can't tell what's supposed to be so awfully weedy. But the area does not look particularly mower friendly, you might not want to just run blades over stuff. Use a loppers on the bigger things, get a weed whacker for the smaller stuff. Rent a bush hog if you feel you need to go flull nuke clear to the ground. If you got any of the poison weeds, kill them hard- if you got choking vines climbing trees those can be dealt with ruthless too. You could leave the rest a bit wild for a while if you want, see what moves in. Wild areas in the yard can be benefical to fauna and flora.

But before you do any of that, have a plan in place for what you are going to do after clearing if you choose to do so. Ain't gonna do you much good to keep clearing if you aren't going to have something else there to take up the void. Scattering in some flower seed sounds good, but in practice is not very pratical. Mother nature will take over again before you will unless you keep up on the weeding till the flowers are well established. And also, wildflower areas also need mowing down and taking care of on the regular too, so if you go that route plan on keeping it maintained as a wildflower area. You could plant in with perennials, those would still need upkeep, but not the same kind as wildflower areas. You could also seed in with grass to fully grass in your yard once the area is clear. Or lay down thick chip mulch if you want it bare.

It sounds like the consensus is to leave it be. Let it revert to habitat. Good idea. You don't really see the area judging by the photos, otherwise for unsightly areas some flowering shrubs along the lawn.. It looks like you already have plenty of open space.

Look into hiring someone who grazes goats. They bring them in for a day or two and they will clear out all the weeds.

Well, about ticks, better to cut high plants and grass, as they hunt from there. We live in woods and when hunting mushrooms - bringing ticks all the time)) can't tell anything about leaves, as they are on the ground.

Just stay out of the wooded area from now on. Birds may be nesting or foraging.

Plenty of weedy shrubs will grow. Some parts of the country have vines that cover everything. I'd try to ID the plants causing the problems and move from them. Birds are probably not nesting how, since they tend to nest to lay eggs and most chicks have left the nest. Birds will forage all year long. They are remarkably adept at avoiding humans.

Thanks everyone for your input!! I will focus on removing poisonous plants. Maybe mow a path every now and then for the dog to wander around but leave everything else as is :)

The vines that take over everything is kudzu and they will kill trees. I see you have power lines, not sure how close your house is to the trees. Stilt grass is another horrible invasive species.

Noted on kudzu and stilt grass. Trees are pretty far back, last year when the trees fell they were just a couple feet from our neighbors backyard door, luckily no damage to their house or ours, our land is kind of shaped like an "L" and it sneaks behind their house. It was a mess and they did fall over the power lines. We went like 5 days without power.