Or: Don't get between a woman and her chainsaw!
Next week is Big Trash Day (which is a misnomer, actually, since it's a 3-day process), and since we only have 2 of these a year, and we're not allowed to set anything out any earlier than the Saturday before, I always have to really, really hustle to get as much out as I can.
I generally don't get it all out because I have a lot of yard debris droping from the Zombie Maple and the other trees in the yard. How odd that I don't think I have too many trees if I can't even keep up with what I do have.
Anyway, I had 4 huge piles of tree debris to haul out. Some of it needed to be chopped into smaller segments, and then I had to prune a couple of trees that had limbs die during the winter. Odd that the trees survived the seriously deep snows we had the two previous winters but then died with the very mild winter we had this year.
Anyway.
It was a lot of yard debris to haul out. Each pile was a minimum of 4 trips with my wheelbarrow. Which I broke this year. It's still useable for most things, and for some (like hauling dirt) I'll now have to line it so it doesn't leak. I dropped alog into it and it bounced and broke a hole in the bottom. But, it still hauled 8 more loads of chopped up tree bits, and will probably haul many more.
Then, I went to prune the dead limbs off the old redbud out front. Because I'm short and hate ladders, I used a scaffold.
This is my scaffold set-up. Yes, my chainsaw is electric. And yes, I need a step stool to get onto the scaffold - I'm short and fat and old and can only really use one hand.
You can see the limbs I'm about to prune.
This is the pile I'd accummulated by 8:00 this morning:
And this is what it looked like after I'd pruned as much as I could reach in my redbud:
As I was pruning it, a neighbor I'd talked to and shared yardwork woes and stories with her came by and commented, "Honey, that's man's work, you know."
I looked down at her from my scaffold, chainsaw in hand, and answered her back, "Sweetie, it's only man's work if you get paid. You know women do all the work for free."
She laughed. Ten minutes later, she brought me a glass of fresh squeezed lemonade, so I invited her up on the scaffold and we sat there talking about yard work.
She emntioned when she was out mowing earlier that week, our new neighbor, the "don't disrespect your man" neighbor, had said something similar to her. She'd been forewarned by the gossip down the street, so she told him her husband liked watching her mow.
Then we looked at his yard, and wondered how he would manage that tree:
Probably he'd leave it for his landlady to deal with. Rightly it is his landlady's responsibility since she owns it. All he does is mow. At least I think he mows. The lawn is generally shorn, but I've never seen anyone out mowing it, and neither has my lemonade neighbor.
I also noticed he was least in sight as I wielded that chainsaw all afternoon, pruning down the redbud.
And when I'd done all I was going to do until it cools off this evening, when I haul the last 3 loads to the curb, Itzl and Xoco came out to play a bit. Hector has become very much an indoor dog. He goes outside only when I carry him outside and them shut the door so he can't go back inside.
This is Hector's face when I suggest a trip outside:
Itzl and Xoco love the outdoors and the flowers in particular.
And Xoco loves sniffing the flower buds:
And now, we're inside, resting up, thinking about supper.