Day 2473 A few chips off a large block.

21st May 2024

It was set to be the hottest day so far, so my idea was to take it as easy as possible.

The sound of tree munching was close by, we had noticed the red crosses against a few tree trunks on our walks, so it was to be expected. So with this noise in the background, Kelli made her “ I’ve just had an idea” announcement. This usually sends the dogs scuttling away, and me with the dread of having to add yet another job to my list.

“Let’s see if they will give us the wood chippings for our garden” she had heard a podcast where it was mentioned that the tree people were only to glad to give this stuff away. We got on our bikes and rode to the next street where the action was happening. The tree they were working on was enormous. There was the cutter man at the top of an extended mechanical arm chopping through the boughs and letting them drop to the ground. Others would throw it into the muncher letting it do the job of chipping it into small pieces.

In a lull of activity Kelli talked to one of the men about taking the chippings. He was happy to drive the truck to our place and dump it in our driveway.

And that is what happened, the truck arrived and dumped at least ten cubic yards on the drive, it was vast, there was enough material to raise the level of our garden another two feet.

Now we had the job of moving it, and spreading it around the garden.

On the hottest day we were lugging plastic tub fulls of wood bits and laying it in the beds. The sweat was dripping, my eyes were stinging, and I was needing to drink gallons of water to replace what I was loosing.

It was hard work, and it hardly made a dent in the mound. With the price of mulch what it is, we must have several hundred dollars worth sitting outside.

Needless to say we didn’t get much furniture done, but I did an experiment where I could use up the number of old wooden cabinet doors.

Cutting them to the same size, mitring the corners and gluing them together I turned it into a storage box, I’m not saying it won’t set the world on fire, but I have a lot of doors to do something with, and this could be a good way of using them up.

We finally sold the bench, at a bloody knock- down price, but it was sitting around, and Kelli threatened to repaint it, so taking a lower offer saved that waste of effort.