burning the burn pile and clearing fences

Last week I tackled the big pile of branches I cut off the limb, trimming them down to stack and pile more compactly. Did what looked like a truck load and there it sat waiting for a still day. In the meantime I asked my neighbor on the other side if I could drive across his acre to my back yard to collect the pile and he said yes and even offered me to put the debris on his burn pile. Nice of him but it's just too much. So I picked up the two bundles from the two front fence sections I did this week and added them to the burn pile over at the shop and then collected the truck load of branches and dumped that and then torched the whole thing and waited til it was mostly just smoldering and went back to the pile of branches, trimmed down another truck load and dumped it on the smoldering pile and monitored it til it was mostly smoldering, went in for lunch and then did the last truckload of branches and dumped that on the smoldering pile and watched while it went up in flames. So, three truck loads to get rid of the branches. Now I just have the limb itself to cut up in manageable pieces and haul to the burn pile. And that's pretty much all I've done this week since I spent three days at SHARE for the meeting, the training, and then the regular volunteer day.

And no I still have not gone over to the shop and finished setting up the studio. Cool weather days were spent working outside. But perhaps this weekend. Or I may tackle the limb or maybe both.

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Of the three tasks, I have completed one. I have dealt with the huge limb that fell, miraculously, at the end of the long day lily bed and without damaging anything. Saturday I got out the chainsaw and cut the limb up into about a dozen pieces. They got progressively larger as I tired and the two biggest were, of course, at the biggest end. I needed help getting them in the truck but I could carry them to the pile. Which I did but not before I took the heavy rake and spread out the ashes. It had become a fairly good sized mound so now the limb and the other brush I've been dealing with (like the side fence and cleaning up around the daylilies) is sitting in the center of a huge ash circle. A good rain will take care of that.

Sunday it was warmer but still not too bad so I did another section of the front fence only at the other end where the culvert is under the entrance to the property. The culvert was completely covered by dead stuff. Clearing all that stuff away from the fence, the culvert, and the street side was the equivalent of three fence sections I'm convinced.

My arms from the wrists to elbows look like I stuck them in a box of feral kittens from all the dewberry brambles. I did that end because I'm encountering poison ivy and I, gasp, sprayed it with poison the other day and I'm waiting for it to die so I started at the other end.

Re your comments about how much hard work I'm doing, I like physical labor even though it can make me tired and sore. I like being outside. I like to dig in the gardens, crumble the clods. I liked that even more before I got arthritis in my thumb joints but I still do it. Working hard and making a visible difference gives me satisfaction. And I'm of an age where once I stop engaging in physical activity, soon I won't be able to. Last week on my volunteer day I was restocking cans of food at the station where I generally work lifting a cardboard tray of about 24 cans of something onto a high shelf when I turned and saw one of the male volunteers, who is also my neighbor, standing nearby watching me and he made some comment about not being a chauvinist and intervening. He knows me. If I need or want help, I'll ask for it

Well, today's the day. We rejoice or we cry.