Men In Trees

"They're all lumberjacks / and they're OK" -- or so we hope. At 7:30 AM today, a truckful of guys showed up at our front door with power tools and piton boots and ropes, and with cheery grins. And now they are swinging from branch to branch like our squirrel friends, lopping off limbs like crazy (not their own limbs, I hope; just the ones that might fall on our roof or deck in a winter storm).

The Bossman looks to be a well seasoned guy; his apprentices are of the "hairy-legged youth" variety (our neighbor Peter's appellation for the many young worker-bees we see up here in our woodland territory). They do the climbing, the Boss does the directing, apparently.

I'm fondly reminded of Teri's Yorktown Heights/Bard days, as she swung herself through a prestigious education doing just this sort of work.

It's been truly spectacular Indian Summer weather here in these hills; very warm at midday, very cold at midnight -- with clear, sparkling skies at both ends of the timeframe -- deep blue sunshine days, jewelled starry nights. But we know that winter will come eventually, so the tree work was a priority. Old-timers here tell us that if we get so much as a light dusting of snow (which Souffle would scoffingly call "a little frost") those oak limbs come tumbling down like well struck bowling pins -- and woe to them as might be standing beneath.

In addition to this task, we've also had the wood stove flue cleaned out; John has cut to size and stacked enough seasoned wood to keep us warm all winter (and our trusty gardener has stacked it all away under cover); we've well tested the central heating (it warms the entire house from back to front, in 15 minutes, on a cool morning); and we're about to purchase a generator, ahead of the inevitable power outages we anticipate as soon as a little electrical storm hoves into view.

However, we are told we can count on Indian Summer glory remaining with us for most of October; and we anticipate our full roster of happy guests during that month to come: Teri comes first; then our friends Glenn and Norma Stuck from Trinity/Santa Barbara; the following week, my sibs come for a few days at Merrybrook Lodge and a good visit with us. I believe that will be that, for the season – nobody is anxious to be here after Halloween, when we're promised the very much needed rainstorms (from my mouth to God's ear, I pray). We are greatly, seriously in need of a lot of water from the skies, this year, to allay the drought that has plagued our water systems up here for two years now.