This is the weekend of Canadian Thanksgiving and we're getting everything from sunny days to hail. But we are truly thankful for our privileged healthy lives. I also have to give the biggest thanks of all to my mom, Sophie Chmill Wyszynski, who would have been 102 today. Happy Birthday Mom!
She would have been as enthusiastic as we were to complete the cutting and chipping of our blighted ash trees. Our chainsaw had been heroic but couldn't handle the biggest of the trees, so we had the guys from Woody's (the name fits, no?) use 24" saws and a wicked Vermeer chipper to finish up. The challenge by the barn was the low-lying telephone wire. The challenge on the slope was the barn roof just 3 feet from the biggest tree to come down. As it turned out, a stray branch did crack a skylight in the barn roof. But otherwise it was like falling off a log!
Despite our warnings that our steep lane has a history of eating vehicles, Woody tried to drive his dump truck up with the chipper connected. Predictably, it stalled out a third of the way up and left skid marks like drag racers at Grand Bend Raceway. They hooked up a 4 X 4 and came up the rest of the way like a 3-car freight train chugging up the Rockies. The chipping resumed and all the branches we cut in the last month became a huge pile of garden gold.
Then chip pile #3 was created by the greenhouse, to be spread out along the fence to keep the weeds and poison ivy lower than knee high, we hope. The finale was the crashing down of the iconic but worst-infested tree, a sad end to 80 years of growth (I counted the rings). What's that expression: As happy as a pig in .... chips?!
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