We spent all of today working on getting that downed tree out of the driveway, and it hasn’t been a good day for equipment, making it all more difficult. Frank’s Stihl chainsaw was broken yesterday by having the tree fall on it, and he bought a spare at Home Depot last night, but he really doesn’t like it. But they’d wanted almost $50 a day to rent one, which was going to be $100 for the two days we had left in the long weekend, which was half the price of a new Homelite with an 18 inch blade, so it didn’t seem worth the money to rent. But every time it wouldn’t start after five or six pulls, I’d hear him grumbling that he misses his Stihl. Oh well, soon enough his regular one will be repaired.
We really did start out with quite the mess. That oak tree had a huge canopy on it, and it fell right in the middle of our driveway. The guys from the electric company had cleared enough of the way to get their truck through, but had just piled up the brush on both sides. So Frank moved his tractor with the chipper attacked into the driveway, and used his chainsaw to cut the branches from the wood that was big enough to use as firewood, and I ran the brush through the chipper.
Something went wrong with how the chipper was positioned, though. Frank says that when he first put it down, it was out of alignment, which he fixed by placing a log underneath the chipper to line it up. But the damage had already been done, it seems. When we moved it after clearing up one area, it made the most awful noise when he was starting it again, and it seems as if the drive shaft broke, and it now needs to be welded together. Another oops. It just isn’t our weekend for equipment.
We did get a lot accomplished before it broke, and the driveway is mostly clear. We used the little tractor for everything, today. We hauled the logs that will be firewood over to the pile to be cut later. (soon, that pile is huge!) We filled it with wood chips. We use it to haul things to and from the house. I really love having it.
We worked out there until we basically couldn’t move, then retired to the gazebo with some wine. Although while Frank went to get the wine, I wandered about in search of Japanese beetles and lily beetles, and found far too many of them, unfortunately. I also found a weird little squarish bug on the roses near the pergola, but I don’t know what it is.
We did notice that the window boxes are looking fabulous while we were sipping our wine in the gazebo. I think I’m going to do an orange, red and yellow theme next year, centered around the lantana. I skipped that this year, and miss them. So now I need to figure out what draping hanging plants I can use instead of the blue things (lobelia, etc.) that are my usuals. I still have almost a month to get my order in to the Jollies, though.