The downside of an early spring

Technically, spring will begin in three days, but it’s been spring around here for the past three weeks!  However, since winter never arrived, maybe we’re really just going from fall to spring.  I can’t remember ever having to do the first mow on St. Patrick’s Day, but that’s how it fell this year.

We’re hosting a life group here tomorrow night, and in Scott’s honor, I have been somewhat stressed about the yard.  Generally, I care about how the inside of the house looks when we have guests.  The only outside part I care deeply about is the porch and walk.  Scott, on the other hand, sees no problem at all with a messy house, just so long as the yard is mowed and neatly weed-eated.

I think the main problem is that we have no lawn; at least not the “real” kind of lawn tended by people who live in subdivisions.  In a couple months this will not matter, because once the weeds get thick enough and we whack them all off at the same height, the uniform greenness will effectively imitate lawn, but right now, there are just too many inconsistencies.  For example, there are the dandelions.  Today, they are blooming so close to the ground that the mower has no effect.  Frustrating little yellow blooms.  And then we have these little purple weeds that are EVERYWHERE in thick four-inch high clumps.  Of course, in a deeper shade of purple we also have a nice but widely scattered collection of grape hyacinths, which I actually like; but in a bed, please!  NOT all over the yard.  Rounding out the unwanted flora are lots of wispy, grasslike green onions.  They’re probably six or seven inches high, but once mown, they are still unsightly mini-imitations of wheat shocks!  Ugh.

I decided the yard had to be mowed before this group, and as I did not want to be working on that project in the forecast 82-degree Sunday afternoon heat, I told Andrew we’d tackle it this (Saturday) morning.

A few days previous, at my insistence, he had already tried unsuccessfully to start the rider.  No surprises there.  It never starts for the first mow, but the push mower had started, which was a hallelujah blessing.  Then there was the weed-eater.  I knew there was something to be done with a little square bottle of oil, so I told Andrew to go read the instructions and fill the weed-eater and try to start it.  He came back in saying that there were no instructions and the weed-eater wouldn’t start.  This was bad news, because the weed-eater is what we really needed to tidy up the front (the part that matter most when guests are coming).  I called our handyman friend and explained that the rider wouldn’t start and would he b3e willing to drop by sometime when he was in the area – he lives some 15 miles away and Walnut Shade is not on his way to anywhere – and take a look at it for pay.  He said he’d come by Saturday.  I also told him about the weed-eater:  that Andrew had poured “some” oil into the reservoir, added “some” gas, and couldn’t start it.  J.R. explained that that bottle of oil was supposed to be pre-mixed into a gallon of gas and THEN poured into the tank.  Well.  He said we’d need to drain it and then he’d take the spark plug out and clean it and see if he couldn’t get it started when he came.  Super nice guy, that J.R.

So this morning, we went out to tackle the yard with only a functional push mower, but lo and behold, here came Andrew driving the rider!  Yee-ha!  Things were looking up.  Why on earth that beast started for the first mow, I have no idea.  Clearly something new and different.  But wait.  It would drive but it wouldn’t mow.  No matter how many times Andrew moved that certain lever, the blade wouldn’t turn.  With my lightning fast mechanical mind, I diagnosed the problem.  Are dangling belts like dangling participles?  The mower’s was hanging at a rakish angle, clearly NOT encircling its intended wheel.  I could not discern a way to get the belt back on, so I had Andrew put the rider away.  That belt will have to be a problem for Scott on another day.

He brought me the push mower and started it for me.  I’m not too good at starting lawn equipment.  I began pushing the front, and I sent Andrew to re-fill the weed-eater’s tank with the pre-mix I had prepared the day before and see if the stars were aligned so as to enable it to start, even though its spark plug had not been cleaned.

God was merciful to us again, and the weed-eater started!  So I mowed and Andrew weed-eated, and when I was about to drop, he took over the mowing.  We only did the front, both sides, and the near back.  The far back is not yet high enough to need mowing, and as the Oldest Female On Premises, I made an executive decision that the mowing of ditches is vastly overrated.

The whole task took us a couple hours, and while the yard doesn’t look stellar, it looks good enough.  I was thankful that we were able to work together to get it done, even with some staffing and equipment deficiencies.  I also texted J.R. that we were fine and to please take care of his own family today.

I am quite sure that yards are really not intended to be mowed till April 15, so does this mean I have to pay taxes today, too?

Feed the birds

That’s a song from “My Fair Lady,” I think.  I like to see birds in our yard, and as everyone knows, the best way to see the birds is to feed the birds.

When we moved to our home over 15 years ago, it came equipped with a nice big wooden bird feeder on a pole in the back yard.  The pole was mounted in concrete in the bed of pink peonies, and the feeder featured clear plexiglass sides and sported a hinged roof, into which, over the years, we dumped innumerable hundreds of pounds of black oil sunflower seed.

Of course, the neighborhood squirrels all know our street address, and it took us quite a lot of experimenting to figure out how to squirrel-proof the pole.  I could give you a list of all things that didn’t work, but I guess all that really matters is the one that did:  an inverted massive plastic dome mounted on the pole about two feet below the feeder.  The dome kept the squirrels from climbing up the pole, but it did not keep them out of the feeder.

Walnut Shade squirrels are a uniquely resourceful sub-species.  They quickly figured out how to climb local trees and/or the smokehouse and fling themselves bodily out onto the roof of the feeder.  They landed with a “thunk” that caused the whole pole to quiver, and even though we have repeatedly trimmed back trees to prevent their acrobatics, they continue to launch themselves with a vengeance.  We have actually watched them leap 15 to 20 feet and stick their landings, gripping their claws catlike into the gradually-rotting wooden feeder roof.

A few months ago, what we greatly feared did finally come upon us.  A male person graciously filled the bird feeder for me, and when he dropped the lid shut, one of the plexiglass sides shattered.  (A male person is reading this post over my shoulder, and he has informed me that the actual reason for the shattering is that a number of years ago, Josiah shot the plexiglass with a BB gun, rendering it structurally weak, causing it to gradually splinter more and more over time and eventually shatter upon roof-dropping impact.  The male person presenting that information is not Josiah.)

Once the plexiglass side was removed in all its shardiness, there was no way to hold the seed in, and so the bird feeder could not be filled.  This was sad for me, sad for the birds, and inconvenient for the squirrels.  The lonely, broken bird feeder stood sentinel on its pole, empty for over two MONTHS, much to my displeasure.

For my birthday, I asked for a bird feeder.  Knowing that in our family, if there’s a certain gift you would like, it’s best to give folks a link to the specific item, I went online to research bird feeders, and I learned that (A) you can no longer buy one a wooden one like our dead one, (B) bird feeder technology has come a long way in the past 20 years, and (C) even a smaller replacement costs an arm and a leg. I was looking for a durable, LARGE (doesn’t have to be filled so often), pole-mountable bird feeder with an easy-open roof.  Easy-open roof is a priority, because although right now Josiah or Andrew fill the feeder, I am smart enough to know that someday those guys will be gone and the task will fall to me.  I, being slight of stature, need a roof that’s easy to open, as I have to strain on tip-toe to do so.

Choosing to temporarily ignore cost, I did locate what I thought would be a quite acceptable bird feeder.  It was metal, which meant it would not rot.  It was pole-mountable, which meant (hopefully) that we could just unscrew the old one and screw on the new one.  It was green (although it also came in blue), which I thought would blend in well with the great outdoors.  It had a “huge”eight-quart seed capacity, which led me to believe that it would surely be even larger than our rotting relic.  But best of all, its little perches that the birds stand on while they eat were spring-loaded and adjustable; meaning that you can set the tension for the weight of birds you want to prohibit from accessing the seed, and when an overweight bird (or a bushy-tailed high flying rodent) steps onto the perch to feed, his own weight slams shut a little window that leaves him looking at the seed but unable to access it!  BRILLIANT!  I won’t mention the price of this nifty contraption, but it was not cheap.

Scott asked me to order myself the bird feeder for my birthday!

It arrived via UPS, and it sat in its large box under the dining room desk for quite a while, mainly because I was afraid to open it and find out that it wouldn’t work on our pole.  I can be silly that way at times.  However, I did eventually open it, and it was truly a thing of beauty.  It is smaller than the former feeder, but that’s just fine.

Scott and Josiah jumped through a lot of hoops and used a lot of tools and did a lot of going in and out and measured and compared a lot of things and discussed a  lot of options, but eventually they did figure out a way to mount that puppy on our existing pole.  Josiah also set the spring-load mechanism to allow blue jays and disallow squirrels, and the feeder is working BEAUTIFULLY!!!  I am so very pleased.

We are seeing all kinds of birds at the new feeder, and so far the only squirrels have been those who sit at the bottom of the pole, gaze upward longingly, and say to each other things like, “Well, son, when I was your age, we leaped off that branch right there and landed on the roof of that feeder.  I can still remember what black oil sunflower seed tastes like. . . “

In with the new!

This morning we planted our new red maple in the front yard.  He’s quite noble and suave-looking.  He’s tall and thin and has much potential.  Much like some other males in my life. . .

Anyway, after a phone call to a nursery and some online research, I have come to the conclusion that I am probably responsible for killing the former red maple by having a flower bed around it.  This is quite sad to me, because I love to grow things, not kill them!!!  However, I am choosing to have the attitude of my friend, Kelly, who, even when criticized, is thankful for the input because she learns something useful for the future.

It seems that there was too much soil (i.e. the flower bed) sitting on the ground around the tree (thereby suffocating its roots), and it also seems to be a major arboreal faux pas to allow significant amounts of soil (i.e. the flower bed) to come in contact with the base of the tree.  Evidently this made it feel claustrophobic and unhappy.

For these reasons, I will now need to re-create a flower bed adjacent to, but not around the new tree.  I have yet to figure out exactly how to do this, so if anyone who’s been to our house has input, please fire away.  You can fire away if you haven’t been to our house, too.

We are all quite excited about our new tree, and after its planting, we encircled it and prayed that it would live and not die and declare the works of God.  We also reminded it of Isaiah 55:10 which says that all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Amen and so be it.

Out with the old

Victory!

Just as the guys got home from work today, Reggie arrived in his backhoe.  In the space of five minutes he yanked our red maple stump out of what remains of the front flower bed.  He widened the hole for us, wouldn’t take any money, and even hauled the stump away.  Thank you, Reggie.

Next step:  do a little hole prep and plant the new red maple (presently leaning against the porch) in it.

Just a little fire

Saturday was the big leaf-raking-tarping-dragging-burning party here at the home place.  Scott invited a subset of the Browns to come help, and the Fringer kids were found raking, too, which is why we had nine folks here at lunch time.

Josiah was manning the ditch (a.k.a. fire), armed with a rake, a garden hose, and the ever-useful shop vac.  It looked like he was having a grand time.

I come from a heritage of “always thoroughly douse a fire with water before you walk away from it,” but I married into the “if you spread the coals and it looks like it’s out, it’s fine,” mindset.  This has always bothered me, sometimes to the point of insomnia, but I have learned to leave areas outside my control alone.  Besides, even though there’s a fire going in the fireplace at bedtime, the house hasn’t burned down yet, so . . .

So I assumed that the guys had the fire in the ditch out (or as out as it’s likely to be put) by dark on Saturday night.  Actually, I never gave it another thought.  Then Sunday at lunch, we were sitting there eating, and Andrew was doing his usual thing in the dining room:  looking out the window to see if the neighbor kids were about, when he exclaimed, “what’s that smoke?”  Hmmmm.  Good question.  There was a bit of a smoky cloud out there.

The guys immediately tore out of the house – Josiah barefoot, of course – and next thing I knew, I saw Josiah racing back past the window and subsequently dragging the garden hose across behind the playroom and toward the ditch.  There were flames, low ones only a few inches high, burning in the dry leaves on the driveway.  Wow.  It was a windy day, and the live coals in the ditch had evidently caught and then climbed up out of the ditch and partway across the driveway, aiming for the old two-car garage.

Our menfolk quickly doused the flames and then spent quite a bit of time hosing down the ashes and dumping buckets of water (why had all the buckets been hanging in the sandbox tree?) on any areas that still appeared to be smoldering.

It was hard to say nothing, and I confess that I did say to Scott, “note that I am standing here saying nothing.”  To which he made no response, but I think the whole thing gave us all a big enough scare that fires will be better doused in the future.  We collectively shudder to think what would have happened if we had not been home at the time.

The mercy of God.

Green pole leaving

This morning, I was in the kitchen doing something and the boys were in the dining room, supposedly doing their academics, when Andrew called out, “Hey, there’s a guy in our back yard.”  Now, there’s not a lot of foot traffic in general through our neighborhood, and someone walking around in our yard – especially someone we don’t know – is an unusual event.  I pulled on a sweatshirt, grabbed my cell phone and went out to say, “Howdy.”

Turns out it was a guy from our electric co-op, and he announced that they were going to replace the electric pole in our yard.  I said, “You don’t mean that pole right there, the one that my clothes line’s attached to, do you?”  And he replied, “Yes, that’s the pole, and we’ll put your clothes line back.”  I felt better already.

“However,” he continued, “There’s a problem with some tree limbs.”    Oh, great.  I could just see it now:  in addition to one kid’s braces, another kid’s college bills, and an upcoming chimney re-construction (which may fall right on the heels of the just-completed well house and playroom roof replacements) we may be facing even MORE chuh-chings to have trees trimmed – and I don’t mean with tinsel – right before Christmas!

“Ummm. . . what seems to be the problem?” I asked.  He walked with me back by the sandbox and pointed out a couple of places where two or more of the three lines traveling from the clothes line pole to the pole near the well house were being pushed down by overhanging branches leaning on them.  He then explained to me that the branches were causing pressure on the lines, wearing off insulation, and putting a drain on our electric service.  He said it wasn’t enough to cause a short that would trip a breaker, but it could, and if it did, we’d be out of water.  A lack of electricity to the pump is never a good thing.   He finished up by saying, “Those branches really need to be trimmed back,” and then looked at me.

“Well, do you guys do that?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And how much would that cost?”

“There’s no charge, but we don’t do anything about the brush.”

WHEW!!!  Was I ever relieved!  Hauling brush is one reason we have boys, so that would be no problem ay-tall.  He indicated how much they’d trim, and I said that was fine and that he could cut away.  I expected him or the other guys by the truck to whip out a chainsaw and get after it, but no.  The actual job will be done, “some other day,” at which time we’ll be powerless for about two hours.

I then asked him why White River Valley Electric Cooperative suddenly decided to replace our pole.  It just seemed a little random to me.  He explained that they check the poles from time to time and that ours is green.  That means that all the treatment is gone out of it and it is rotting, so if a car hit it (in my yard??!?!?), it might go over easily and take out a lot of other poles with it.  True confessions:   I had never noticed that it looked green, and in fact, it still looks decidedly brown to me.  In any case, my dad says it isn’t easy being green, so maybe that’s why it has to go.

Finally, I asked the guy about the pole near the well house.  As in, what if that one were to turn ‘green,’ too.  He said, “That’s not our pole.  It’s YOUR pole.  That one over there (pointing to the ‘green’ one) is ours.  And actually, your pole is okay.  It’s in pretty good shape.”  Well, that’s good to know!  Truth be told, I have plenty of things to think about without ever even remotely considering the greenness of our electric poles.

For now, we just have a spiffy new non-green pole lying in the grass beside its rotting counterpart.

I drive and I push

We have a saying in our family that I often use when things get too complicated for me and/or are outside my jurisdiction:  “I drive.”  It means, “I don’t know about that,” or “I can’t do anything about that.”  As in, Scott decides which route we are going to take, but I drive.  I really like driving, especially on long trips.  Driving is very relaxing for me.

Today I added another phrase:  “I push.”  It means that when Andrew turned on the riding mower (which was serviced at Doc’s Mowers for a cost of over $250 a few weeks ago because its drive belt fell off and mere mortals can’t put the drive belt on – but we did have them replace the blades and do the annual tune-up while they had it – and when we got it back ten days ago and Scott used it for 30 minutes the drive belt fell off again – and Doc had it for over a WEEK this time, putting a drive belt on it – and it came home yesterday afternoon and Josiah used it for his part of the yard and it was fine, thank goodness) . . . As I was saying, when Andrew backed the rider out of the lawn building this afternoon to do his part of the mowing, the drive belt fell off and I told him that he’d have to do his part of the yard with the (brand new – thank you, Scott!) push mower, he said he refused to do it with the push mower. And Jessica and Josiah are both sick and Katie’s on the road, and Scott had said it needed to be done by Wednesday night, so I said, “Fine.  If you won’t do your lawn chore, I will do it and I will get the pay you would normally receive for doing it.  And while I do your mowing, you will do my cleaning chores.”  And thus did it happen.

I will confess that it was very hot and I thought several times that I might fall over, but I endured to the end and successfully push mowed our back yard (approximately one-half acre) in the blazing sun at the hottest part of the day.

I push.

Like Habakkuk said

“Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls—
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.”   (Hab 3:16-18)

So Katie’s leaving on Tuesday, and I, the Intrepid Planner of All Things have created a nifty plan for that day:

1.  Katie leaves

2.  We cry

3.  We all work like crazy to make plum preserves

Last year, immediately after #1 and #2, we had a very successful Plum Preserving Party, but I did end up having to run buy a few necessary supplies that we ran out of.  In my zeal to be ready for the Big Day this year, I am pleased to say that already last week I bought jelly jars, sugar, and fruit pectin – each in significant quantities.

Then a couple days ago, one of our neighbors stopped by to ask if he could trim two of our trees that overhang Coffee Road.  It seems that his motor home is 12 and a half feet high, and he can’t get it under the dangling branches of one of our big boxelder trees and some other tree of our that’s right along the road.  I was fine with that – after all, who can argue with free tree trimming? – and while he maneuvered his cherry picker into position, I walked back toward the house, passing under the plum trees as I went.

And I looked up.  And it was then that I noticed that there was a small solitary orange-ish plum dangling from a branch.  I scanned the plummy canopy.  That plum was the only plum.  One lonely 1.25-inch plum.  No plums scattered and rotting all over the ground under foot.  No insects whizzing around licking up leaking sweetness.  No thousands of purple plums ready to drop into our buckets on Tuesday.  No, I am appalled to announce that there are no plums ripening on our trees!

Every other year at this time, they’ve been turning purple and falling like raindrops.  Most years, we just let them fall, and after a week or so, that twenty-foot stretch of Coffee Road blacktop is sticky with busted-open plums, and that corner of our property smells like a plum wine distillery!

But alas, alack, even though both plum trees bloomed beautifully in the spring, and even though I don’t recall us having had a late killer frost, it appears that there will be no #3 this year.

“Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.”

Transformation

We arrived home from our vacation to find that our yard had been completely transform.

In the dwindling percentage of lawn not covered by mountainous molehills, the ground cover is actually GREEN.  And I’m talking about almost ALL the weeds; not just the wild onions.   We also have those little purple-flowered sticking-up weeds all over the place, and the daffodils are in full bloom.

Then, in just the four days since we arrived, a few tulip leaves have pushed their way up through the mulch in the big bed, the crocus leaves have sprouted, the forsythia bush by the smokehouse has created a few feeble blooms (although other forsythias in the neighborhood are completely loaded with flowers), the Bradford pear has flowered, and this morning two crocuses – one white and one purple – both burst open.  Wow!

Spring is my favorite season, but it always seems to come too early.  I am never ready for its rushed days of frantic peeping, blooming, chirping, and changing.  I wish it would all slow down and space itself out better, so that I could enjoy each event deeply and singly.  However, even though spring will surely crash fatally into the dreaded heat of summer, today I am choosing to simply enjoy the springiness of it all.

Pole saw is man’s best friend

It is in the nature of the male of our species to conquer, to smash, to subjugate, and in general to exert power over his environment.  This possibly explains why some men deliberately smash into each other on a grassy field as they attempt to move an odd-shaped ball from Point A to Point B.  And why others rip phone books in half or shatter cinder blocks with their bare feet.  And in our case, why my husband, a man of great intelligence, creativity, AND strength decided to attack our trees with his pole saw.

It all came about because of my worry box.  During one Sunday sermon, our pastor mentioned in passing someone else who tends to worry about things.  That person made a worry box, and every time he was worried about something, he wrote it down, put it in the box, and forgot it.  Every Wednesday, he would open the box, read the items, and either throw them out (if they no longer applied), deal with them, or put them back in the box.

I tend to worry a lot, and I told Scott, jokingly, that I need a worry box too!  So, we made one, and he told me that if I was worried about something, I should put it on a card in the box, and HE would go through the box each Wednesday.  Now this is quite a good deal for me!!!

I had put a card in the Wednesday Worry Box last week that said I was worried about the branches that lay on our roof.  Our trees are large and overhang the house in places.  This makes for good shade, but somewhere in my past, I had picked up the concept that branches should not lay on the roof.  Several huge ones of ours did.  I had requested the removal of said branches several times over the past few years, but they had not yet jumped off the roof.  Since I had put my Trees On Roof worry in the box, I promptly forgot all about it.

Yesterday afternoon, Josiah came to get me and told me he needed me to hold a rope and pull it.  Hmmm…  We got outside and looked up.  Scott was on the roof of the playroom.  The ladder was also up on the playroom roof, and it was leaning against the main part of the house.  Scott had his trusty weedeater-with-pole-saw-attachment as he climbed the ladder.  Josiah tossed down to me a rope that was looped around the rather substantial main branch of a walnut tree that had been resting comfortably on our roof for some time.  I was instructed that “when it starts to break, pull hard!”

Yes, I would have the sole responsibility for making sure that the brawny branch (it was probably twelve feet long and three or four inches in diameter, with many branches and their associated leafiness also attached) did not fall on Scott’s head or Josiah’s.  No pressure.

I did manage to take a number of pictures, mostly because no one would believe the paces Scott put that pole saw through and the altitude from which he operated.  I did successfully heave-ho the monster branch at the right moment, no one was injured and the pole saw was still functional.  It’s a good thing because that first tree established Scott’s momentum as a bona fide tree trimmer.  He scurried all over the front and side yards, whacking off everything from dead twigs to the entire (dead) half of our two-trunk paper birch.

Nothing leafless was safe.  It reminded me of Jesus’ story about the fruitless tree:  “there’s no fruit on this tree, so whack it down!”  Once most of the offending branches had succumbed to gravity, Scott went to work making firewood.  Basically, he used the pole saw to trim the branches down to hauling size.  At that point, those of us with less testosterone hauled them to the burn pile.  Meanwhile, Scott pole sawed their trunks into fireplace-sized logs.  Actually, the girls and I suspect that several of them are a lot shorter than necessary – just because the pole saw makes it so fun to slice and dice timber.  It’s a guy thing.

This afternoon, Scott was hard at it again.  There was still the massive branch (even bigger than the aforementioned walnut tree branch) on the back of the roof, the little bit of walnut tree still dangling against the chimney, AND the truly significant limb and accoutrements laying (or is it lying?  I never remember that one) on the smokehouse roof.

With Jessica holding the ladder, he managed to lop off the back roof problem, but I ended up holding the ladder for a fairly scary one.  While I watched the preparations being made, I was really hoping it wouldn’t end up like those cartoons where the guy climbs a tree, runs out on a limb, and triumphantly saws off the branch he’s standing on.  Let’s just saw that he had the ladder up one two stacks of two cinder blocks, it was almost fully extended, and it was leaning against the branch he was sawing off.  It all worked out okay, but when the pole saw got pinched in the groove as the branch began to break, I confess that I had visions of Scott hanging onto his beloved pole saw and being pulled down with the ensuing avalanche of limbs.

The final giant to conquer was a set of fairly lacy limbs (walnut tree again) brushing against the chimney.  Now, the chimney is stone and probably wouldn’t be harmed by having branches leaning against it – in fact, they may help hold it up. . . hmmmm. . . – but with ALL the other visually offensive leafy detritus gone, one simply COULDN’T leave those few branches there.

Back up onto the playroom roof went My Hero, pulling his ladder and pole saw up after him.  He parked the ladder next to the house and leaned it (again almost fully extended) against the chimney.  That would be the chimney that has been steadily removing itself from the house for a couple of years.  He then started the pole saw and ascended the ladder, held firmly by Josiah – under my penalty of death.

Scott then let go of the ladder completely, in order to swing the pole saw up toward its intended victim.  I should get points for keeping my eyes open while I prayed.  The pole saw is a weedeater with a mini-chainsaw attachment that can be substituted for the regular weedeater thing.  It also has an extension that makes the handle longer.  The whole outfit is maybe six feet (?) long.

I watched in disbelief as Scott gripped the ladder with his left hand, held the near end of the pole saw with right hand, and swung the apparatus up over his head and out to the right at a 45 degree angle, trying to get it to lay (lie?) against the base of his intended victim.  It took a few tries to get it to bounce/land where he wanted it.  Then he commenced a sawing motion, and that’s when I really needed a card for my Worry Box! Here he was, sawing determinedly, with the saw resting on top of this branch.  What would happen when he sawed it through?!?  Obviously, the pole saw would come crashing down (with no branch to support it), and as it swung down, would it hit Josiah?  or Scott?  or knock Scott off balance and off the ladder?

I STILL kept my eyes open while I prayed.

No problem.  He sawed off offending branch #27, flicked the pole saw off, and carefully lowered it to Josiah.  Just like he trimmed trees without ropes, belts, or harnesses from precarious perches for a living!

Now there are absolutely NO branches touching our roof or the smokehouse roof, we have an incredible amount of brush to burn, and we have a litle stack of sticks for the fireplace.

And Scott said over and over how glad he is that my folks gave him his pole saw.