Saturday, In the Yard

We call it Chainsaw Therapy.  It doesn't matter what is bothering you, after a few minutes cutting up tree limbs, your perspective changes.  Anger subsides.  Worry decreases.  And the sawdust that gets in your eyes is a small price to pay for the opportunity to play with such danger.

A recent Saturday began with a lawn full of leaves.  It took 3 passes over the lawn to mulch and bag the leaves.  I don't even know how many times we had to stop to unclog the mower blade, but let's just say it wasn't anyone's idea of a great time.  It is really cool, however, to live in a community that picks up yardwaste and composts it for the community.  My tree leaves will become mulch that will be used throughout city parks, medians, and people's gardens.

Then we decided to take advantage of the house next door being unoccupied and remove one of our tree limbs that had been hanging over the neighbor's house.  Dale, who is very smart and can pretty much tell exactly where a tree limb is going to fall, climbed the tree with his trusty saw.  Spencer, who loves danger, was in charge of pulling the limb down with the rope to keep the limb from damaging the neighbors' house.  We forgot to mention we didn't want to damage the neighbors' fence.  Oops.  (We fixed it the following weekend.)

We then decided to tackle the limb that hung over our roof from the neighbors' tree (same empty house).  Again, Dale scaled the tree, saw in hand.  Again, Spencer manned the rope.  When the tree let go of the limb,  I breathed a sigh of relief.  No people or vehicles were harmed in the felling of that limb.  Because it didn't actually fall.  There was just a little scrap of wood keeping the limb from fully disconnecting from the tree.  Dale cut that.  It disconnected,  And it came within 18 inches of  taking out the front of my van.  (This picture is Dale, Calder, and Spencer pretending to be impressed with their tree skills.)  Needless to say, there was plenty of wood for Chainsaw Therapy.  There was plenty of wood for the fire pit.  There will be plenty of wood for the fire pit for some time.

We went on to clean glutters, unhook hoses from faucets for the winter, and I tried to get the crew to hang Christmas lights.  Not so much.  The bags and twigs don't even begin to reflect the amount of work we did that day.  Or how sore my muscles were.  Or how much work we need to do in the backyard.  And garage.  And pretty much every room in the house.  But it was a good day, and no one was hurt.  Not even my car.

So as another day of Chainsaw Therapy and family togetherness came to a close, I had two thoughts:
1.  If that limb had hit my van, what kind of insurance nightmare would that have been? 
2.  How is it that I get to have such an amazing life?