Tuesday, August 01, 2006

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.

:)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stacy. Men and their trees. My husband has been dumb enough to try to trim our huge tree in our yard. I remember it well. The idiot took an extension ladder and balanced it on a limb about 15 feet in the air... climbed up on the ladder with a chainsaw and proceded to cut off the end of the branch. However, he forgot to factor in that when you drop 30-40 pounds off the end of a branch, the remainder springs up. He did this all with me yelling at him about being stupid and not taking the time to move the scafold that we HAD already set up in the yard. Well, his screams were heard blocks away as he yelled to me to grab ahold of the ladder... which was barely resting on the remainder of the branch. OH, and he dropped the running chainsaw meer feet from me. Yeesh.

Martha in CA said...

Mine doesn't have any trees to cut. But he's been around the 'hood looking for free firewood.

And speaking of wood...you should have heard the glee in his voice when he called to tell me a friend had a big-honkin' (couple hundred year old) oak tree cut down today. I imagine he'll be looking to see if she wants to get rid of her wood pile, although I have NO idea where he's going to put it! We have about 3 cords already.

Men.

Sigh...

Anonymous said...

Stacy, I am so glad to see your updated blog. I've been worried about you! Glad nobody got hurt, next time somebody yells "timber" I'm going to take it seriously. :)

Veronica said...

Wow - you're having some very bad luck with trees!

And I can just see Darren...waiting for the moment you're not home to finish off that tree. My dad would do EXACTLY the same thing. Sigh ;)

agent713 said...

Is it the trees or the chainsaws? Seems like men like their power tools too much to worry about their own safety.

Glad he's okay and that you haven't killed him either...yet ;)

~Heidi

tosin said...

Well, I'm mostly just impressed that you knew the name of Miracle Max's wife. And I thought I was a true fan!!

:)

~toemi~

Nancy D. said...

Heat. When trees get hot they suck up a lot of water into their branches. Which makes 'em heavy. Between the nuts and the water.... recipe for falling limbs.

We'd have to dig up Darren and kill him again if he had killed himself. For future reference Darren.

Normy's gonna use some wood from the old oak that died (and had to come down) at the church to make Kait's gavel and sounding block for Job's Daughters. Y'all need to do something with some of that wood besides burn it up. Cause it has a STORY!