Picking Up the Pieces

Well it may not seem like it, but we are making progress in cleaning up our little yard of devastation. There is still a phenomenal amount of wood strewn about, but order is being imposed. Bob and I are beginning to resemble "knuckle walkers" as our arms are being stretched from carrying all that wood. We'll never have to purchase firewood again!

Truckload after truckload... but the lawn is looking okay after the logs are lifted and the saw dust is raked away. There has even been cause for cheers as- amazingly!- several shrubs and hostas and perennials survived (a bit twisted) but alive. And most of the rhododendrons and the mountain laurel are actually flowering despite being hidden beneath a canopy of destruction...
We also mourn the plants and trees that have been decapitated and crushed.

There is a lot more light coming into the yard, along with an odd optical illusion. The yard appears so much wider that our sense of where the garden beds begin and end is skewed. It's hard to describe, but when sitting on the terrace, the first garden bed should be fifteen feet to the left. Weird. I guess it's the fact that the trees that fell were so much bigger than they seemed. It's all very disorienting.

But we make sure there are rewards after all that hard work, like these tropical coolers concocted with the coconut rum that Bob received from John (of Beatrice and John fame) for his birthday. Mix in pineapple and orange juice and a bit of seltzer and add an umbrella and you're transported to the tropics. It also helps to dull the memory of all that wood moving, and maybe even explains why the garden beds are shifting.

Firewood Unlimited

Bob and I have an additional chore, besides getting hay, making art, doing laundry, taking care of the garden, etc etc etc. We go to secure our heating supply for the winter, otherwise known as "doing firewood". That huge tree, above is the source of this winter's heat.
Our gracious friend Tina has offered us all the wood from trees that have fallen on her property in Bridgewater. The soil is stony and there is a lot of ledge, so trees tend to topple over and leave these weird root monsters:

That's the underside of the above tree. (See all the rocks to the left? Not much soil for those roots to grasp onto.) I walk around scouting and musing while Bob cuts up the branches. (And try not to worry as it's dangerous work. Those sideways limbs are way overhead and sometimes crack and split in unintended ways. I'm always relieved when the branches are felled and the wood is safely on the ground.)
That's also where I come in: I help Bob pick up the cut logs and load them onto the truck. This is probably why Bob and I are in pretty okay shape physically. We spend so much time hauling things like hay bales and wood and compost around. Who needs a gym?
Here's another uprooted tree. There are so many of them!

There is enough downed trees for several years worth of fire wood. And it's way less dangerous than felling an entire tree, so I'm glad of that. If you've never been in the are when a large tree hits the ground, you have no idea how traumatic it can be. They really fall hard. But even in a downed tree, there's spring and tension in the weight of the limbs and it's not easy work. Bob loves it and has been doing firewood since his teens but it still makes me a bit nervous... But it's good exercise and way cheaper than buying gas or oil from some corporation that exploits people for living in a cold environment! And besides, the field looks so much better cleaned up when these fallen trees are cleared.