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About the Header Image: Idlebrook Wendy Darling Evensen "Wendy" one of our four Labrador Retrievers.

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Monday, December 6, 2010

Splitting Trees and Celebrating Birthdays Can Wear Everyone Out

Good morning,

We're still working on splitting this Catalpa tree.
When we took this 70 to 80 foot tree down, we ended up with 35 or 40 huge hunks of the trunk to split.  We've traveled a great deal in the last couple of months, but every time home, we get back to work on splitting this wood.  We were loading those chunks of wood one by one on that cart and taking them to the back by the garage where we had a solid, flat place to split them.  It takes two people about two hours to split (My Honey splits) and stack (I stack) each of these hunks of wood;  we split five of them this day. The day after the above picture was taken...
...our daughter and friend loaded and brought the last eleven chunks of trunk to the back for us.
 Have I mentioned lately how much I appreciate that daughter of ours?  After these pictures were taken we split all but the last four of the chunks of trunk.  Tomorrow should be the last day.
We have had very little rain up to this point, but when we do get a little, it is gobbled up by the dry earth very quickly.  These few drops were so pretty on the back of this leaf.
 
 And, while doing all of this splitting, we have our best friends nearby.  These logs are all too large for them to fetch for us, but they do stand by as our security force.
 
 Just because we are busy splitting wood doesn't keep the birthdays from happening.  We had a grand time celebrating grandson Alex's and granddaughter Katie's birthdays.  They were born four years and seven days apart so we often have a double party.  They both do pretty well at these shared parties so it works out just fine.
 I made biscuits and bread...
 ...and Catherine made omlettes, ham, goetta, potatoes....  It was a birthday brunch feast for ten including Erik and Penny.   ;)
 Speaking of Erik and Penny, shortly after the birthday kids, their siblings, and Dad went home, our two "kids" were making zzzzzz's in the entrance hall.  What a beautiful matched pair. 

We're all worn out.  :)

zzzzzz,
Lois

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7 comments:

Beatrice P. Boyd said...

Hi Lois, seems like you will have lots of wood to last through a cold winter and you can think of the tree while enjoying the warmth it will give. We also had a family birthday this weekend in RI and took another road trip to celebrate our grandson's 4th.

grammie g said...

Hi Lois..well your daughter is a keeper for sure!! : }
Looks like a full day to me!!
I love the last picture of you babies all tucked out from there busy day!!

Cheryl said...

I am just amazed at all of the wood! It sounds as if you have a routine down pat, concerning the wood. That is quite a process! I especially like the photo of the two dogs taking a snooze!

Anonymous said...

That is/was one large TREE!! wow. Bet it lets in a ton of light now!! Lots of wood to split. Do you have a splitter? The pups look cute all sprawled out sleeping. I have one little sprawler under my desk right now. worn out!...debbie

Elaine said...

Looks like you had a great birthday party, judging from the tired out pups. What a relief to get that tree finally chopped up!

Tanya said...

Wow, stacking wood sounds hard on the back! (So does splitting it but that would never be my job. I'm definitely a stacker...)

Lois Evensen said...

Good morning,

Yes, that is quite a job. And, the is just a little tiny bit more to go as of the writing of this post. We stopped that day to have the birthday celebration. Getting all of that wood split then in the racks we have available is quite a challenge. Stay tuned. ;)

We have another road trip, too, Beatrice. It seems we just get home long enough to chop some wood and to have the oil changed in the car and have it safety checked before we take off again.

Thank you, everyone, for stopping by.

Very best,
Lois