trees

Dumb blogger won't let me upload any pics. Grrr. I'll try to add 'em later when Blogger's in a better mood.

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You might recall that back in April, our big cedar tree declared itself dead and fell on the neighbor's roof.

Well, ever since that day, Darren has slowly sawed and hacked away at that tree, starting with the lowest limbs and working up. It had gotten to the point where he was using a pole chain saw, above his head, standing 20 feet up on a ladder. I was not amused. I insisted that he CUT IT OUT and call a tree man.

Flash forward to last weekend. I was driving home from Tennessee and called Darren. When he answered, he was out of breath.

"What's up?" I asked.
"Workin' in the yard," he answered.
"What are you doing?" I pressed.
"Uh. Gettin' in trouble," he said slyly.
"What. Are. You. DOING?" I insisted.

"I topped the tree."
"You topped the TREE??? DARREN!"
"And it broke one of the family room windows."
"You topped the freakin' TREE?"

He apologized over and over about the window. But I did not care one WHIT about that dumb window. To his credit, he had nailed plywood over the window he thought the tree MIGHT hit. He had even placed a sheet of plywood on the porch roof, to ward off any damage should the tree land there. But as trees often DO when they're cut, it twisted and fell slightly off course. WHICH IS WHY I DIDN'T want Darren to top the dumb thing.

"You're lucky it didn't twist and land on your sorry self," I murmured. He tried to convince me that he'd been very careful and was completely out of harm's way. I didn't care. I was pissed.

"If you'd've been killed," I said, "at your funeral, I'd be like Valerie, Miracle Max's wife on The Princess Bride, and I'd be saying, "Boo! booooooooooo!"

Hmpf.

In other news, we were all sitting on the front porch Friday night when Darren's mom and I started hearing crackling sounds. At first, I thought someone had leftover bottle caps from the 4th of July and were popping them out in the street. Then it got louder, and I stood to look, 'cause it sounded like a fire crackling. And then it happened. A huge branch came crashing down out of one of the pecan trees out front. NOT DEAD. Totally green and healthy. And totally heavy-laden with nuts. Enough weight to break this huge branch right off. It landed right in the street along the curb, where our neighbor ALWAYS parks his car. Only that night, it was parked across the street in another neighbor's driveway, 'cause they were on vacation. How's that for luck?

Darren was only too happy to get out the chainsaw again and chop it up... and now we have good pecan wood for smoking meat this fall.

Stupid trees. Can't trust any of 'em.

:)