Sticks - March 21, 2021

 

Yesterday was the official first day of spring.  I can't think of a year when I've been happier to mark the day.

I was outside early, pruning rose bushes and checking to see what was budding or blooming.

After lunch, The Husband said it would be a good day to trim Nanny's crape myrtles.  She wanted it done last year, but we never got around to it.  This year, she has already mentioned it several times.  The bushes - effectively TREES - are growing near both ends of her front porch.  They were far taller than the roof, and the limbs were bigger around than my arms.  We hitched the wagon to the 4-wheeler, loaded up the chainsaw, and headed down Nanny's driveway.

We almost killed Nanny several times before we got the job done.  She insisted on helping, even though we begged her to just supervise from the porch.  As The Husband lopped off the limbs, I grabbed them and swung them around so that he could cut them into manageable chunks.  Nanny would stand too close as I was swinging the limbs around, and I almost whacked her several times.  

We piled the big chunks in the wagon and threw the tops in a heap in the front yard, intending to pile them on another heap of limbs in the pasture in front of her house, where my son had piled some brush he had cut along her driveway last fall.   Crape myrtle wood is very cool.  The limbs are straight and smooth, and the wood is hard.  As we filled up the first wagon-load of wood and prepared to dump it somewhere, I kept thinking what a shame it was to waste that beautiful wood.  Then it occurred to me that Cousin Roger might want it for his new wood-working projects.  Those limbs would make great legs for rustic stools, assuming Roger could figure out how to dry it without it splitting.  

The Husband hauled the wood over to Roger's house (I saved a long, straight piece for myself), and Roger said he'd give it a try, so they unloaded it, and The Husband came back to start on the second tree.

By this time, Nanny had experienced a few dizzy spells from all the bending and raising up, and we asked her to please, please sit this one out.  She sat down on the porch steps to "supervise" while we trimmed the second tree.  At one point, one of the limbs fell toward the porch and missed her by about an inch. 

After The Husband drove the second load of wood over to Roger's, we had to figure out how to move the crape myrtle tops away from the front yard.  It took us a minute.  We laid out a tow-strap on the ground in front of the first pile, and The Husband used the bucket on his new tractor to push the brush onto the strap.  We bundled the brush with the strap, and he dragged it to the pasture and came back for the second pile.  Made quick work of that job.  It took a little longer to rake up all the stray sticks and haul them away.

When we finished, I commented that I was hungry, and Nanny invited us to a supper of left-over spaghetti.  I was glad for the invitation, for the thought of going home to cook was not all that appealing.  We'd probably have had toast if it had been left up to me.

It was pushing 8 o'clock by the time we came home.  I took a shower, popped a couple of Tylenol, and went to bed.