Just Call Me Paulette Bunyan

This morning I managed to finished the yard tasks I started yesterday with minimal injury or incident. My goal was to get rid of 3 pots of junk trees in a back corner of my yard. One of the pots was full of weeds and grass but the other two had small hackberry trees growing in them. I don't like hackberry trees and consider them just an overgrown weed so I had no problem helping them to meet their demise.

Yesterday's fire ant treatment worked well since I only saw one today. He stung me on the top of my foot but when I looked down I saw that he was alone and carrying a suitcase so I assume he was just expressing his anger at being evicted. There's also a slight chance I was hallucinating from the heat.

 Other than that, the only other critters I ran across were some worms and a cute tiny frog that I shooed out of the way so he wouldn't get hurt. Before he hopped off I told him to tell his Dad to knock off the late night chirping right under our window since all the nice girl frogs are in bed by 10 and he should be too. 

Getting rid of those pots was a lot more work than I was anticipating. The first one wasn't too bad. I pulled out all the weeds then with a great deal of huffing and puffing I managed to turn it on its side and empty out the dirt.

I could see that the next 2 pots were going to require some tools so I grabbed the good pruning shears, the dirt rake, the leaf rake and a shovel. You might notice that the leaf rake and the shovel are a little small. That's because they're made for a child. We bought those for Taylor when she was probably 7 or 8 years old but Jayson and I have always used them a lot more than she ever did. They're real tools, not toys, they're just kid sized. The shovel is perfect for me because I almost can't lift a shovel full of Texas dirt which is dense and full of heavy clay. But I can lift a tiny shovel full of it!

I used the pruning shears to whack off manageable sized branches from the first tree then grabbed the trunk with the intention of pulling it and the pot over on its side to empty out the dirt like I did with the first pot.

This one didn't budge. All of the pots were about half full of dirt so they were heavy but not so much that they couldn't be moved. It didn't take long for me to figure out why this one wasn't moving. The tree's roots escaped the confines of the pot using the drain holes so it was firmly rooted in the ground.

This made me mad so I yelled at the tree. It didn't seem to care.

Fortunately the first tree was only about an inch in diameter so I was able to pull on it enough to expose the roots which I chopped with the shovel while chanting in my head, "don't chop off your toes, don't chop off your toes..."

The second tree nearly did me in. It was about 2" in diameter so I couldn't cut the trunk down short enough to grab it and pull on it. Once I had all the branches removed, I just wedged myself up against the fence and used my feet to push on the trunk, hoping that would expose some roots that I could chop.

It did. Eventually. But it wasn't easy. My feet slipped off the trunk a couple of times causing me to land on my backside in the pot, straddling the tree trunk and pulling earth worms out of my shorts. That was fun.

By the time I finally got the roots cut and pulled that stupid tree out of the corner, I was so hot and exhausted that I considered drinking water from the hose. I didn't actually do it, but I thought about.

I used the dirt rake to spread out the dirt from the pots while in my mind I made plans to call Comcast later in the day to tell them that if they don't get someone out here NOW to bury that cable, my dog might chew off a section of it and choke to death. Then I will tell the world that Comcast killed my dog.

Okay, I don't really have a dog but if I did that could happen. Maybe. That cable was supposed to be buried 10 days ago so every time I look at it I become angry enough to consider lying just to get it taken care of. That's what having Comcast as your cable/internet provider does to you.

The corner looks much better now and I'm hoping that some day I might have the energy to drag the pots and the bags of branches out to the curb.

Someday.