Today’s adventures of the House of Dragons was unplanned, unexpected, and pretty fun!
Yesterday I had to take a trip into town, but my vehicle decided it wasn’t going to start… again.
My mom had to come and drive me into town to take care of my business, and she listened to me gripe and grumble with such grace!
My Denali has been a broken mode of transportation for years, honestly, and yesterday was my breaking point with it.
So, this morning my dad came over to try figuring out what is up with it… again… and hooked it up to a charger for the day.
When he finished that, I took him to my back yard to show him the “Man Cave” my children have decided they wanted to start digging behind the shed. Yes. Man Cave… Literally the beginning of a giant HOLE in the ground!
That is yet another story on its own!
We walked around the house. He started looking at things that he had planned to finish for the past year, and then he said he brought his chainsaw and figured he would just go ahead and cut down the dead Spruce tree that was very close to the side of the house.
By himself.
One man. One chainsaw. A wedge and hammer. And the boys and I standing to the side, watching the whole thing “go down” so to speak.
Oh! And my mother on Marco Polo on my phone, having panic attacks as she watched a little of the event as it happened. Ha!
Dad cut a section of the tree to give it proper direction for the fall, then began to cut into it with the chainsaw from the other side.
All three boys gathered behind me and we watched as Dad inched his way through the trunk of the tree toward its center.
He put the wedge into the cut and hammered it in.
The tree shook, just a little.
He stood back and waited.
It stopped.
Dad picked up the chainsaw again and kept cutting, slowly, inch by inch.
He picked up the hammer and hit the wedge a few more times.
The tree shook again, a little more.
And then it stopped, again.
He gave it one more cut and backed off. The tree was slowly giving way, and you could see it as the topmost parts shook and shuddered.
I was getting excited! The boys were getting excited!
Dad stepped forward with the hammer one last time.
Gave it two hits.
The tree began to lean (more than it already was), slowly, tipping and groaning.
“It’s going down! There it goes!” I told the boys behind me. It was so neat to see!
It was like slow motion, watching the tree as it groaned, leaned, and then fell exactly where Dad wanted it to with such grace!
Yes, the swoosh and crashing sounds it made as it finally landed on the ground were loud and a bit ungraceful. But watching a tree fall from where it stood is quite the sight!
The boys cheered and jumped up to climb onto the fallen giant in our yard.
The stump was tall. Micah climbed up on it and held his hand high, like he had just championed some tall mountain. It was adorable!
Dad swept the sawdust off the stump and they counted the rings. There were at least 35 of them.
I had to go back inside and take care of the babies, but while I was in there Dad, Grandpa, and Micah worked hard to get the tree cut up and removed from the front yard to a burn pile out back.
When I finished my indoor work, I walked out to see the progress.
The tree was gone! All of it! They made quick work of it, to say the least!
Dad got the stump grinder out and finished off the last of the stump that was left, the stump of the holly bush we cut down months ago, and an old stump in my grandparent’s yard next door. It was fun to watch.
Before he ground up the stump, Dad cut a huge chunk off it to make it shorter. Now, I have a stump chair in my yard! I need to figure out where to put it! It’s so cool!
The boys were bouncing all over the place shouting, “The wood chipper! We are getting wood chips everywhere!” And my first thought was, “Oh great… I’ll have wood chips to add to the tracks of grass, mud, weeds, stickers, and other outdoor scraps through my house…”
After that thought, though, I smiled. We had a great day. No, my house didn’t get cleaned, or the laundry done, but we had a good, productive day and everyone was smiling. It was bliss!
And that has been the theme of my world lately. Since just after Christmas, bliss has been felt around here. It has been such a blessing!
Had I been stuck in social distance land with anyone from my past this would be such a different story to tell, I’m almost certain! But it’s not. It is pure happiness, joy, bliss, a little chaos and drama, but overall we have peace.
Thank God!
