I say, I say, I say boy

Yesterday was another full and productive day out here in the suburbs. I was out in the yard by 8:30 trimming the trees of dead and stray limbs. It's amazing what a little trimming can do, though it's easy to go overboard and hack off a big chunk of tree branches. I managed to constrain myself, though using this tree trimmer was kind of fun. I lopped off a few low hanging bows from the two big pine trees out front and then trimmed the cherry tree and the apple tree of a bunch of dead limbs. Lastly, I set the fallen limbs ablaze; I don't think I'll ever get tired of burning stuff out here in the country. It's cathartic. Though I do have a red-neck side of me that is showing; instead of using matches and paper, I used a lighter and a can of Rustoleum to get the fire going. Yeeha!

Before I knew it, it was 11:30 and I was hungry so I MICROWAVED some leftover spaghetti for lunch. I haven't owned a microwave in the last five years and it's kinda' nice, I must say. Still I prefer to boil my water for coffee as opposed to radiating it.

I digress.

Above left: The PITA tree house. Above right: The PITA tree house ready to burn!

The next task on my list of home-improvement/yard-rejuvenation was to yank the ugly half-built tree house out of the maple tree in the back yard. This was a major pain in the ass. It took me about two hours to pry all the boards free and drop them to the ground without putting big gouges in the lawn. Aside from balancing on tree branches and prying all of the 2 X 4 floor boards up with my framing hammer, the floor joists were THE WORST. The braniac who installed these, used torx-drive 10 X 4” screws which were nearly impossible to pry apart. I persuaded them loose with a 10lb sledge I found in the car port. After the tree house was removed from the tree, I then carried, wheelbarrowed & dragged piece after piece over to the fire pit. I have a ton of nails to pull before I can burn these up. I don't want to worry about stepping on a nail this summer – I'm planning to use all the ash from the fire pit as fertilizer for the garden.

I then put the old Dodge Dakota that's been sitting at the side of the house for the past year, up for sail on Craigslist. It's a 1990, manual transmission, 3.9 liter that runs great; but has no brakes! They need to be bled, and I'm not up for it. I put it on Craigslist around 4:00 and I got a call ten minutes later by a guy who sounded so much like Foghorn Leghorn that I thought it was a prank call. Anyway, this guy's coming over to bleed the brakes and drive it away this morning. Should be interesting.

After putting the truck online for sale I took apart the flue of the fantastic wood stove in the basement. That was a job, fit for it's own blog post; I think I'll do just that. I didn't get to ride yesterday because I was too caught up in fixing and cleaning but maybe I'll get out on the road bike today. We'll see. Weather is looking like rain this afternoon. More later...