On Thursday morning, all the big news was about the London bombings. But a much, much smaller scale disaster occured at Casa Rhubarb. Around 9:00 AM, we had a brief thunderstorm. The rain and cool temperatures were extremely welcome. It hasn’t rained here in over a month and the average high temperature has been about 97 °F (36 °C). What was less than welcome was the discovery that the storm had downed my Bradford pear in the backyard. This was a sizeable tree, about 25 ft. tall and 60 ft. in diameter. Apparently, the extra weight of the water on the leaves and a gusty wind were all it took to split the tree at it’s major junction. The falling branches took out a portion of my (brand new) back fence and a redbud tree growing in the alley.
I spent all of yesterday and quite a bit of today cutting the debris into manageable pieces, bundling them and stacking them on the curb for Monday’s trash pickup. They’re going to love me. I’ve decided to save about half of the branches for Thursday’s pickup, but there’s still a huge pile out there.
Now the major news is on Pensacola and Hurricane Dennis. I can’t even imagine the task facing them to clean up afterwards. I lost one tree and it’s destroyed my weekend and blistered my fingers. How much more difficult would this have been without electricity, air conditioning and cold Gatorade? My sympathies are with everyone in the path of that storm.
I was sick Thursday evening through most of Saturday. I managed to get out Saturday afternoon to pick up some groceries, picked up my kids from their mom’s and we spent the night eating a nice dinner and watching movies.
Today, feeling better, we went to the batting cages. I haven’t done that in ages and it was the kids’ first time. They loved it! I was swinging for the fences and now I have this blister on my palm from the stupid rubber grip on the bat.
Quicksilver, sounds like your weekend was almost as much fun as mine. :dubious: I’ll trade you the batting cage blisters for the chainsaw variety, though.
And now the weekend gets even better ( :sarcastic smiley: ), first, the chainsaw threw the chain. Just as I had discovered that it had broken a screw that holds the chain bar in place, my wife yells at me that the A/C is making a strange noise. I go over to discover that the condenser fan motor has failed. sigh. Fortunately, it’s only 94 °F outside now. So I rig my shed cooling fan up as a temporary condenser fan, repair the chainsaw, finish getting the branches out of the yard (never mind the ones in the alley), mow the back yard as the sun sets and water the drooping plants and flowers.
I got great big blisters on my bloodshot eyes from looking at the long-legged beauty up ahead. What she does simply walking down the sidewalk of the city makes me think about a stray cat getting fed.
Also, I went to Whiteface Mountain and Lake Placid today. And then stopped for ice cream on the way home.
You need dual 22" titanium oxide machetes. Oh man, I almost cheer when trees fall down, knowing the fate that will await them. They are the best melee weapon ever and equally fun on non-human flesh a la Apocalpyse Now. Trees, that is, not wild… things.
If you’ve got a machete capable of cutting up 6" tree limbs, I would definitely like to see it. Of course, even if it worked, I’d suspect my blisters would be a lot worse!
Well I wouldn’t exactly recomend it, but I’ve chopped up branches with a much greater thickness than 6 inches. In fact, that would take between 4-13 chops, depending on what it was stationed on. Of course you wear out quickly, but it is still great fun.
Oh, and my two machetes are wrapped with a foam and duct tape concotion - soft and non-slip. Rather comfortable, actually. I’ve never gotten a blister atleast.
I think I’ll stick to the chainsaw, thankyouverymuch. There’s a pile of bound bundles of ex-pear tree at my curb that is 18 feet long, 6 feet wide and 3 feet tall. And that’s only about half of the tree. I’ll tackle the other half during the rest of the week, just as soon as my back stops aching and the blisters subside a bit. Although, if you’re up for a road trip, I’d be happy to save the rest for the Twin Machetes of Destruction[sup]TM[/sup]
ps - you have to do your own bundling. That’s the only way the garbage collection will take it.
There’s piles of bundled tree branches in front of nearly every house in New Orleans right now thanks to T.S. Cindy last week; I suspect the whole city heaved a sigh of relief that Dennis missed us so all those bundles wouldn’t turn into flying missiles. Fortunately, my yard was spared, even though I have lots of trees – I’d just had major trimming done in preparation for selling my house, plus the power company had just come through and trimmed around the electric lines running across the back of my yard. So the biggest branch I had down was about 6" long, which was just fine with me.
In a karmic move that I absolutely adored, however, my next-door neighbor, Treekiller, who took down every tree of any size on her property, still ended up with a big pile of broken branches from a bunch of other neighbors’ trees that went down into her yard. Sometimes mother nature has my kind of sense of humor.
I was swinging for the fences and now I have this blister on my palm from the stupid rubber grip on the bat.
