Timber . . .

I rushed home from work today, and made it home in about 20 minutes, in hopes of fitting in a 30 minute bike ride before supper. But as soon as I turned into the driveway, I had a sinking feeling that wasn't going to happen. My first clue was two trucks full of limbs in the driveway, forcing me to park in the yard between our house and Miss Rosemary's. The second clue was a 80 foot tall oak tree cut up in sections lying partly in our backyard and partly in the neighbor's yard. I went into the house, put down my purse and lunchbag, grabbed a pair of gloves and headed outside to do my duty.

I guess I should give background first. Two years ago during a wicked storm, the tree was hit by lightning. At the time, the only casualty was a squirrel's nest in the tree catching on fire. As time went on, Dad knew that the tree would eventually have to come down before it came down on our house, garage or gazebo. The deciding factor was when Hurricane Ike moved through the 'Ville last month and we had the massive windstorm. Thank the Lord the tree made it through, but we knew it would need to come down. Dad got quotes and made a deal with the service that would do the dirty deed today.

Flash forward to this evening. Dad was still surveying The Compound, and me and our neighbor Bev put on our gloves and got to work. We used muscles that we didn't know we had; I can assure you this because as I type this right now those muscles are hurting. I'm very proud to say that we made it through the moving of the gigantic tree parts without any foot or hand injuries. In fact, the closest thing we had to an injury was when Bev dropped her end of one of the gigantice tree pieces and it landed on my foot, but thanks to my quick reflexes I was able to get my foot out of the way with only minimal pain.

Dad said his only priority was getting all of the tree pieces back on our side of the property line; he said they could sit there till next year until he has time to get them split up and hauled off. But at least we'll never have to worry about the tree falling down and damaging The Compound.