Saturday, September 25, 2010

Joe Jordan and the Cherry Tree

Hope you like the title of this post. It's a little homage to the story "George Washington and the Cherry Tree" but in this case Joe was supposed to cut down the tree, the cherry tree wasn't beautiful, and lying about cutting down the tree never entered either of our heads so I guess besides the actual words of the title the two stories really don't share any other parallels.

Anywhoo... on with the story of why Joe cut down the cherry tree.

Just when I thought this summer was gone forever, Saturday turned out to be a glorious 78 degree day. Knowing that this could very well be our last sunny Saturday for a while, Joe decided it was now or never to tackle a project that's been on his to-do list for quite some time: cutting down the dead cherry tree in our backyard. Besides, we knew that cutting down this tree would make my Aunt Christine one happy neighbor, since the tree that blocks all the sun from her patio would be no more. So Joe, not forgetting his boy scout skills, rigged a sort of pulley system that connected the branches to be felled with our apple tree and then also connected the pulley to his Jeep. He drove the Jeep further & further away, inch by inch,  till the rope was tight- this way he could control the directtion the limbs fell as he cut with the chain saw. It was a very interesting and genius system and my explanation does not do it justice. 







Ruby enjoyed watching the tree come down.


While Joe was busy chopping down the tree, I too wanted to do some kind of outside work that would allow me to upgrade our home while enjoying the last fleeting rays of summer. I couldn't just watch Joe do all the work; I needed to help too so I decided I would mow our lawn. We have a lot of lawn and we don't have a riding lawn mower and for a girl who, as Joe put it, "didn't grow up on a farm" mowing the lawn was a big job.


Getting started.

Experiencing technical difficulties.


Back on track after help from Joe.

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