November!!

Wow!! What a great day outside! It gave us a chance to get out and tackle the yard a bit. You may remember this brush pile from a post in May:















Well, today, we hacked the new chainsaw out of the box and borrowed a lopper from the neighbor, so now it looks like this.

















The catch here, is that with that saw and loppers, we also cleared a bunch of scrub trees from the alley, so the pile above was replaced with this one...











and this one...













aaaaaaand this one.






Said neighbor is Uncle Dan, who also uses his big John Deere Lawn tractor as a source of light exercise. Since his kidney transplant, he feels a bit more up to getting out and about. He still can't handle lots of walking, but he does quite a good job of mowing our lawn! He gave it one last pass today, then when he saw us out puttering in the yard, wandered over with some of his accessories to power rake and help run the saw and lopper. The kids raked and burned leaves had a fire for recreational purposes in the outhouse pit, while we roasted weenies and marshmallows in the firepit and enjoyed the sunshine. Tomorrow is supposed to be nearly as warm, although cloudy. Hopefully we can get a bunch done then, too.