Bill Roper's Journal

The weather cooled off today and I took advantage of this to knock off work a little early this afternoon and go out with the family to try to dispose of the remaining branches that I had trimmed off various bushes on one side of the house. While the lilac branches that I'd pruned were nicely dry, the forsythia branches were stubbornly continuing to try to grow leaves. That is one persistent plant!

Anyway, it took a couple of hours, but we filled one barrel with chipped branches and the other barrel with branches that we cut down that were too big for the chipper, then topping that off with more chipped branches. This is now done in time for garbage collection on Friday, which is good, because there are more things that need to be cut down and chipped before I am done.

I still need to consider whether I am going to try to dig out the rest of the forsythia bush, which is looking small and robust at this point. But will it flower next year? Darned fine question. The various volunteer bits of forsythia still need to come out, along with the wreckage of the honeysuckle and the volunteer maple.

But that is a project for another day.

It was that sort of day.

The fence repair having been postponed by Sam's knees stubborn refusal to cooperate with his desire for them to stop causing him excruciating pain, I figured we could at least get the remains of the forsythia bush reduced to wood chips and into containers for yard waste disposal. I saw our over-the-fence neighbor working in her back yard and stepped out to let her know that the fence work was being delayed again when I realized that I had a more urgent problem to deal with.

Something in the back yard smelled *really*, **really** bad. And then I realized that it was the ruins of a dead animal about half way down the yard. It looked like a dead raccoon and it looked like it had been there for at least a week. And had been chow for some critter as well. Yum.

Now, I'm pretty sure that Ruby the Dog hadn't killed this raccoon, because our mighty hunter would have been *sure* to make sure that *we* knew about it. I'm guessing that something killed it in the schoolyard over the fence and someone decided to "gift" it into our yard, where Ruby may have dragged it around a bit, but didn't bother to let us know about it because, well, already dead.

It was, in any case, now *very* dead, very smelly, and very in need of being disposed of.

Did I mention that my list of official positions in the household includes "The One Who Deals With Dead Animals"? Normally, this would not be too big of a problem, except this was a very large dead raccoon and it desperately needed to be bagged and transported directly to the garbage can in the garage. The thing is that you need one person to lift the dead carcass with a shovel and another to hold open the very large trash bag as the carcass is unceremoniously deposited in it.

There was a conspicuous shortage of volunteers for "Person To Be Left Holding The Bag". At this point, the Household Selective Service Act kicked in and K was drafted into the position of Bag Holder. She was *way* less than thrilled by this.

Ruby was captured in the house to keep her from interfering with the upcoming escapade. I got the corpse up on the shovel, dropped it once with it falling over to the top side instead of the underside that we'd been looking at -- yes, definitely a dead raccoon -- and then managed to pick it up again and get it into the interior of the bag without touching anything else. K was then instructed to seal the bag and take it to the trash can, directly to the trash can, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

After this, chipping up the ruins of a forsythia bush looked really good.

Gretchen ended up sitting on the ground next the chipper, keeping the chute clear, because the long forsythia tendrils had a tendency to clog it, while the kids pulled the debris onto the driveway, and I spent most of the time feeding objects into the chipper. It did a really fine job, especially when I would hand it a six-foot length of branch with offshoot branches everywhere and it would just suck the thing in and make wood chips out of it. The children, Strength and Speed, also spent a bit of time feeding objects to the wood chipper while I reduced some of the larger objects to be smaller ones.

We filled two barrels and three leaf bags with debris, the last bag being mostly larger branches that were too big to shred successfully. The debris having been removed from the yard, I could now see where there was still one patch of forsythia that needs to be forcefully separated from the base of the plant. I'll do that tomorrow, but it can sit and dry out until next weekend, because the garage is now full of forsythia bits waiting to go out with the yard waste next Thursday.

Oh, and we have moved the garbage can out to the driveway for the week, because we have learned our lesson after the time that I cleaned out the freezer one Sunday night and threw out a bunch of very old meat. In the middle of the summer. No. Not again.

Like I said, it was that sort of day.

Two barrels of chipped forsythia bush and assorted other unwanted growth are sitting by the curb waiting to be taken away. The new wood chipper performed admirably, although it does have some tendency to clog the output chute. It does a fine job on the smaller branches though, sucking in huge untrimmed monstrosities. If they will bend, they will chip.

Sadly, there's at least that much forsythia bush left to chip up and dispose of.

But it's progress!

I bought flowers for Gretchen today.

This was at her request. She wanted flowers for the planters on the patio, so I stopped by Home Depot today on the way back from lunch (which Gretchen had joined me for) and picked up two large planters and another six-cell pack of moss roses to be united with the other pack that I had found at Jewel last week.

Planting should, I think, be tomorrow. :)