Timber!

This past weekend Mamie helped me tidy up the back yard a bit – cutting back the dead hosta, throwing out the browned chrysanthemums, clipping down the astilbe.

     Not too taxing, outside of the many trips to dump the clippings and the worry that one of the neighbors might narc me out for the compost pile I’ve hidden in the woods back of the rhododendron.

          Today provided much more dramatic backyard entertainment.

          It began when I looked out of our front door and found a giant log hauler parked in front. A scan to the left showed bobcats, and a chipper truck. Good thing we’d just returned from breakfast out and had no desire to go anywhere soon because we also had a massive crane parked in our driveway. 

Evidently, they were partying at our house because of the big poplar that was struck by lightning this summer, a boom I won’t soon forget. 

Unfortunately, this is the tree with a trellis where I’d finally successfully coaxed a clematis to grow.

          With the clematis in mind, My Guy hied himself outside to request that they leave a 10-foot stump. The loggers called the board (the ones who’d never bothered to tell us we’d be visited today by large men in hardhats), who said no, it had to come all the way down. Otherwise, we would be responsible for the cost should the board decide at a later date the remaining stump really, really had to come down. We said, fine, we’d cover the cost. (We have somewhat conflicted emotions when it comes to the condo board since they threw innumerable and illogical roadblocks in our way when we glassed in our screen porch, using the exact same process and company our neighbor employed with nary an objection.)

          We then pulled up our porch chairs and hoped we wouldn’t soon be joined by a 20-foot chunk of poplar.

 

 

 

 

Come to think of it, my former teaching career looks downright easy in comparison.