Just Down the Road From Hooterville

There was a pruning workshop at our local greenhouse last weekend and Dean suggested I go along with him so I could learn a better way to cut back the chokecherry forest trying to take over the yard.  I agreed it was probably a good idea since randomly hacking at them with big scary shears while I yell “die you chokecherry bush” or “you’re outa here sucker!” hasn’t really been very effective.   Thankfully Unfortunately I came down with a head cold the day before the workshop (which is what I get for mentioning one too many times that I haven’t been sick since our last trip to Ecuador almost 2 ½ years ago) so I got to had to miss that stimulating lecture.

What?  Doesn't everybody wear Christmas socks and sandals when they're sick?

It might have been better if Dean had missed it.  When he got home he was obsessed with the two huge cottonwood trees in our yard.  He took me outside and told me they’d never been properly maintained.  He swept his hand up and around.  See?  They should only have three main limbs and this one has way too many.  And they’re shooting out to the side, not straight up like they should be.  And look at the other tree.  It’s not as bad but it still has too many limbs and those limbs are growing out, not up.  And look at all those dead branches.  They need to go.

Oh, it’s not like he hadn’t been out there trimming trees already.   And it’s been a good thing because the more dead wood he’s cut out of those cottonwoods, the fewer little branches and twigs I’ve had to rake up off the ground – which seems to be my obsession.  But after this pruning workshop he came home determined that something had to be done before those two big trees fell on the house and garage.  The longer he looked at the trees the more convinced he became we needed to have them cut down.  All I saw was money pouring out of our savings account into two big holes in the ground where trees used to stand.  I mentally tried to calculate if the value of the firewood they would provide would offset the cost of cutting them down.  And that’s when I made my mistake.

Why don’t we just cut as many of the limbs off as we can ourselves, and then we can get a bid to remove the trees, only we’ll leave the trunks and you can carve them?  That should reduce the cost, don’t you think?  It wasn’t long before Dean was decked out in his coveralls, safety glasses, boots and earphones and he was up on a ladder with his chain saw.

“If you want to help, you could drag the branches off,” he told me.  If I wasn’t so dang obsessed with a twig-free lawn I would have played the head-cold card.  But instead, my chest slathered in Vicks and my head filled with snot, I filled my pockets with Kleenex and started hauling.

Our very own slash pile.

I knew we were in trouble when I saw him standing on his ladder eyeing one big branch that reached over the garage roof.  It’s going to fall on the garage if you cut it!!  Insurance doesn’t pay for stupidity!  He acted like he couldn’t hear me through his headphones but I knew he could, because earlier when I’d asked the boys, in a in a normal conversational voice, “which of you dug this hole in the pen?” Dean had lifted his earphones and said, “what?”

Yes.  You see two dogs.  That's another story for another post.

He cut the branch partway and then tied a rope to it and handed the end of it to me and told me to “hold it tight.”

In his infinite wisdom he must have thought I would be able to guide the branch away from the garage as it came crashing down once he finished sawing.  It didn’t work.

After he nonchalantly pointed out to me that he could easily pound out the dent in the roof, he moved on to the second cottonwood.  The house and garage were safe from any branches falling from this tree but that didn’t mean it was without its pruning challenges.  At one point Dean’s eyes were bigger than his toy chain saw.  

He told me he’d need to finish sawing the branch with a hand saw.  I pictured him walking back with a hand saw.  You know.  The kind you hold in your hand.  With no power cord attached. 

I didn’t even waste my breath expressing my opinion this time.  I just counted his fingers and watched for spurting blood as the tree branch fell very nicely ...

... and settled snugly into the V of another tree.

Dean stared at it for a while and then decided the two of us could just pull it out.  But the vaporub had cleared my head by that time and my brain was functioning, so I suggested he hook a chain to the ol’ John Deere instead.

When he finally decided he’d cut every branch within his reach I swear I saw the cottonwood branches sag in relief.  But, if I was a chokecherry, I’d be nervous.  As we were picking up the tools and cleaning up the branches, I saw him staring intently at them, gently stroking his chainsaw.

 

The end.

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Just Down the Road From Hooterville

Construction With Cookies – Day Six

Ahhhhhh………it was so nice to have two days without deafening, banging, jolting power tools.  It felt like a vacation.  

I wasn’t sure how early my bees would show up on a Monday morning but they were here shortly after 8 a.m. and within minutes were dragging in rolls of insulation.  The noise as they stapled insulation was barely noticeable after Friday’s cacophony.  I didn’t have any problem hearing their country music playing in the basement and I suspect they could hear strains of Mumford and Sons coming from upstairs as I was baking Chocolate Peppermint Snaps – Day Six’s Construction Cookie.  The recipe said they’re supposed to taste similar to the Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookie and I love Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies so even though I’d never made this cookie before I took a risk. They didn’t look like the Thin Mints, and they didn’t taste exactly like them (of course I ate one … okay two … and a half) but they were minty and chocolaty and pretty tasty.

By the end of the morning my worker bees had stapled up all the insulation.  Now it really looks like we have walls!  Unfortunately it also feels even smaller down there.  But when I step off the bottom stair into the room I kind of feel like I’m being enveloped in a fluffy cocoon.  And it’s so quiet.  It’s kind of cozy and comforting. 

A truckload of drywall was delivered around noon and all 51 boards (yep, I counted them) had to be carried down to the basement.  When Dean and I were demolishing the basement I helped him carry some drywall boards upstairs and out to the garage so I know from personal experience they are dang heavy.  Hopefully the cookies gave my bees some added energy, but after watching them haul all those boards from the truck, up three porch stairs and down 12 basement stairs (yep, counted those too) and then back up those 12 basement stairs and down three porch stairs to the truck to grab another one, I thought I probably should have just given them a big bowl of Wheaties instead. 

Speaking of demolishing the basement – you know how they say when you heat with wood you are warmed twice – once when cutting and splitting and once by burning?  Our basement warmed us twice too.  Well, it warmed Dean twice since, even though I implied I was an active participant in the basement dismantlement, he was the one who pulled off all the rough cut wood on the walls, and pulled out all the nails, and then cut it shorter, and hauled it in so we could warm the house with it.  This basement was my project and I fully intended to pull off all that wood myself and take down the drywall and do all that basement demolition stuff, but he really seemed to want to do it and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by taking that away from him.  I did do a lot of vacuuming and cleaning down there though so that must count for something.

 Anyway, at the end of the day yesterday we still had a support post and the mechanical guy who was supposed to come and put in two more heat registers was a no show.  But I’m sure he’ll be here today and my worker bees told me the support bracket is supposed to come in this week.  In the meantime, let the drywall hanging begin!

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Construction With Cookies – Day Six