It's All done with Ropes

Oak trees have a habit of growing branches to impossible lengths horizontal to the ground. The squirrel highway as we called it was one such branch. At its end was a tuft of brown leaves. Albino, the tree surgeon in the picture agreed that if we didn't take it down it would soon fall of its own weight. 

In extras are pictures of Albino starting the process of cutting down the tree he is standing in which was dead. The woman in the second extra was belaying him from a spot on level ground. The branches to be cut were also roped and carefully lowered to the ground before being carted off to the chipper. The original plan had been to drive the chipper down through the field to our back fence, but it is still pretty wet so they parked it in what's left of Dorie's driveway next door and threw the brush and logs over the 8 foot fence.

John and David have cooked up a plan to inoculate some of the logs with mushrooms, so they saved a couple of the bigger ones for that project. 

The tile guys never showed up, and Greg had to go home and take his wife to the hospital after she fell down the stairs, but David was in and out, installing LED lights in the bathroom ceiling and  taking the fronts off the vanity drawers and doors. Greg's wife apparently has a big knot on her head (and probably a a major headache) but is going to be ok.

I didn't get a whole lot else done today, as I was busy directing traffic while John had his turn with the dermatologist. Looks like we'll be needing more Band-Aids.

No less effort than cleaning the Augean stables,* but like Hercules, the job was accomplished in a day. Ironically, our river, Santa Rosa Creek, has already been diverted by a giant log jam which Albino and his crew may be tasked to clean up if no other solution can be found .

*In classical mythology the stables in which King Augeas kept 3,000 oxen, and which had not been cleaned for 30 years, The cleaning of these stables was accomplished by Hercules, who diverted the river Alpheus through them.I