The Week That Was

So, I'm a lumberjack (and that's OK).

In the end, we took down and sawed up four trees from the Deadfall Maples (naming rights still available), cropping it to a six-member group. First fell a dead snag in the wind, then the second tree in full leaf, then we took down two more dead snags, because when they fell, would have done serious damage to the house or brought down still more trees.

And by "we", I mean myself, my Lovely Bride, and my extremely competent next-door-neighbor Ron, who provided the gas-powered chainsaws, had them sharpened up, and called dibs on the largest of the fallen trees. In exchange, all the wood from the downed trees is going to his woodpile, which should keep his kitchen fireplace going well into the next decade.

There were a few adventures. We dropped one of the snags accidentally on top of the Aztec Temple Grill (also a good name for your band), and smashed some bricks, but given that the darned thing was put together without mortar in the first place, it was easily repaired. We moved the bronze cat birdbath out of the way of where we thought the tree would come down, and, of course, almost dropped the tree right on the new spot.

So, we sawed up the trees. We hoisted the stumps back into a relatively artistic arrangement. The Lovely Bride gathered up the leaves and branches and put them in the back part of the lot, which is our widerness area/briar patch/composting site. Then I mowed the lawn to get all the stragglers. Then a heavy rain hit to help drive down the sawdust. The casualties are a bent gutter and a smashed set of lawn furniture.

And I, for one, am exhausted the day after finishing all this.

More later,