I wasn't sure if the guys were gonna come, given that it was supposed to be dangerously hot, and also I hadn't heard anything from the head guy
I slept badly because it's so hot (even with air conditioning - the house heats up and there's only so much cooling you can get, also I've set the thermostat at 80 during the day) and I was anxious, I think, about being up early enough for the guys. I also had some shoulder/intercostal muscle pain, I may have overdone the workout yesterday and also I've been coughing (asthma: it's very dusty here right now)
As it turned out, they didn't need me
But I got up early anyway, and got dressed and ate.
A little bit after 7:30, I heard a truck in the alley, and went and peeked out. Yeah, it was a guy. He started by cutting the brush near the tree (the head guy said they'd have to do that to make room. I didn't care; I didn't have anything back there I wanted to keep.
They also picked up ALL the brush I had cut myself and stacked next to the garage. I had got on the list for next week's pickup, now I'll have less (I still have a little from the side yard, and I hope to do more this weekend when it's cooler.
They worked pretty much all day. I off and on watched them while working on Moominhouse stuff, because my craft room overlooks the backyard.
I did finish the "root cellar" more (I still just have to make and paint the shelves, and finish the "drawer" that forms the root cellar with spray lacquer) and started the sofa
I finished these:
these are the dining chairs. I wound up having to modify how they were done slightly - there were supposed to be tiny "upholstered" bits on the arms, but getting the fabric to fold around the cardstock templates so it didn't fray was IMPOSSIBLE and I gave up after one of them got badly bent. I don't know if I'm just kind of clumsy or if the person who made the photographed models used some trick they don't talk about in the instructions. For the seat covers, you had to "tape" (with doublestick, which never works as well as intended) and then glue the edges around the back of the little plastic form.. Which didn't work, I had to glue the fabric on (and some seeped through) and then I used a running stitch to fundamentally hem the edges and then took long stitches to tie them down before gluing them on. (I'll do similar for the "upholstery" for the sofa, which I built the wood part of today and painted)
I'm slowly working through the backlog of kits. Some of the things are relatively simple to make (like the "stairs" into the root cellar) but other things - like those chairs - are really tricky and require a lot of concentration.
And the guys kept working. I think they hauled off three trailers' worth of stuff - first, brush, and then branches, and finally big chunks of the truck. As five o'clock drew near, I wondered if they'd knock off at "normal" stopping time (They worked until nearly 7 on the Saturday they came to remove the downed trunk, but that was an emergency).
Yeah, they did. I was actually surprised they kept working through the really hot part of the day (noon to 3) though they did get a break in there when the trailer was being taken away to be emptied (and the guys who stuck around laid down on the grass in the shade to get a little rest)
I waited for them to go, and then went out to look.
It's mostly gone. I know they're coming back tomorrow; they left one of the "tethers" up on the tall part of the trunk and also left one of the gas cans tucked up in the shade of my crepe myrtle. They closed the (broken) fence gate as much as they could; hopefully no one creeps in my yard overnight and lifts it (I think I only had someone walk into my yard unauthorized once, and he was already a suspect in a crime at another place....)
Here's a close up of the tether. There is one guy who's a climber who goes up and removes the trunks piece by piece. I was impressed; he didn't even hit the fence right next to the tree once with a chunk.
That's hard to read but it says TGR 2023 on it. I wondered what that could be; I know I didn't have the tree worked on last year and even if I had, I'd have thought the arborist would let me know of any identifying marks added.
So I looked it up online.
"TGR" stands for Tree Growth Regulator, a chemical that's somewhere between a hormone and a herbicide, which is used by some power companies (and some cities, I suppose) to slow down the growth of trees.
I was NEVER CONSULTED whether it was okay for them to spray my tree. And now I'm wondering - earlier that year, the city came through with a big cutter truck and just cut any overhanging growth on the alley, and then I guess O G and E came and sprayed this, and I wonder if that 1-2 punch killed my tree. It was really only this spring that it started to look really unwell.
I'm put out - MOSTLY because this was used without my knowledge.. A friend of mine at church AT LEAST got a letter this year warning her. And she looked it up because they wanted to spray the pecan tree that she collects and eats the nuts from. And she called them, because one of the cautions online is "do not use this on food plants" So they told her IF she got an arborist in to trim it, they wouldn't spray.
But anyway: I'm spending a bunch of money to have this tree taken down to make it safe now that it's dead, and if the tree died prematurely because it's "simpler" to spray without telling the homeowner rather than asking them to arrange for an arborist, I'm angry. (If the tree had still been alive, I'd have got someone out this fall to trim it; I had them on a rotation)
But anyway, I guess they'll be back tomorrow to finish it. I think I'm gonna go over to school and do some work, I probably won't go in on Independence Day or Friday - usually it's loud here and I don't sleep well those nights, and it's supposed to be a BIT cooler so I would like to cut more brush out of my north yard.
But yes, I am very tired of all this heat. I changed the sheets on my bed tonight and between the very mild exertion of doing that, and sitting in my craft room (which is warmer than the rest of the house - poorly insulated and at the very end of the chain of the ductwork - I feel warm and need to take a quick shower before bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment