“Before enlightenment, chop wood, haul water. After enlightenment, chop wood, haul water,†is one of my favorite zen aphorisms. Okay, so no hauling water for me – at least not unless the drought gets worse, but there’s going to be a lot of wood chopping in my future.
On Saturday, margaretc’s husband, ‘A’, came by and took out two of the trees that have been worrying me. They border our drivway and both had holes in their bases. Since they’re not small trees (40-50+ feet tall), I was worried that they would either come down on the house, the 500 gallon propane tank, the cars, the well, the power lines – you get the idea. It seemed better to take them out on our own terms.
The removal went well. It’s a great comfort to have a certified master arborist doing the work 🙂 . ‘A’ climbed the trees – rope climbing the one and spiking the other (impressive!) and sat up top cutting the major limbs. After that was done, he rigged a multi-pulley system so that we could pull the trunks down to a location that wouldn’t cause any harm. It went perfectly.
Now I have to finish cutting up the two trees and chopping the rounds into firewood. Looks like we won’t need to buy wood for a year or two. Surprisingly, chopping wood isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I need to work on my technique, but it could wind up being fairly enjoyable.
Next tree project – order and plant some replacement trees. I’m thinking a couple of walnuts might be nice.