Early Winter Blog Blip

So perhaps you noticed a recent, recent being a relative term of course, big blip in my blogging, none in December, one in January and a handful in February.    There is always a ton of reasons for most events but I would have to say that there was one particular reason my late fall, early winter season seemed to go off its rails, which isn’t the same as being “off the hook”.

Note:  I’m not going to edit the photos in this post in any manner, just raw, right off the card.

Back in late November Dirt and I were merrily ticking off projects.  One of the projects we wanted to tick off, compost bins. 

Now Dear Reader, you may think, hey a compost bin or two, easy peasy to get done right?  Umm not so right.  Compost around here is a whole ‘nuther thing. 

We not only compost manure and vegetable waste, we also compost bodies.  Animal bodies, and really only left overs of butchering days.  The particulars of how that is done is for another post, for here today, several months late, suffice it to say, our compost piles are big, and so our bins need to be big.

We looked into making bins with what is called ecology blocks (cement trucks with left over cement pour the left overs into molds and wa-la you get a big huge chuck of concrete that can be stacked on another one and weighs a lot) You probably see bins like this Dear Reader, at your local landscape supply yard where you can get top soil for your garden or beauty bark (bark dust). 

But alas, there is a slight economic gooseneck around here and not every idea can get out of the fermenting bottle.  So… we decided to kill two birds with one stone.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have used that phrase… the word “kill” should be avoided here.

Any way we have a couple of very large cottonwood trees by the area where my piles are, where the bins will be. Some of them need to come down.  They are huge, dense (mostly with water) and would make great bins.  Okay not great. I already have bins made from cotton wood logs, they aren’t great, but they are cheap, free cheap, and I deal with the imperfections, somedays better than others.

If we cut it down before it leafs out I could also harvest all of the tips and extract the resin from them.  I am in love with the hand salve that I made from the resin, I crave the smell of the dried tips. Definitely a good reason to cut the tree during late fall.

And a fir tree, which will be used for fire wood, needed to come down for my Market Garden to Market Shed Road. (A short road needs a long name.)

So the day to do the tree cutting came, well for me it came, for Dirt it was thrust upon him, that would be my part in the mistakes of the day.  Dirt eyed the job and because so many things were on the job list he decided that some usual practices could be sidestepped because really, these two trees would come down easy, exactly where they needed to, Dirt’s first and most profound mistake of the day.

First the fir tree.  Dirt made his strategical cuts, all was going well, down it came,

right on the fence.  Ooops.

Well it only missed by that much (see thumb and index finger nearly touching).  Nature isn’t the only one that takes out fence lines, hard to get too mad at the mind blowing storms.

But onward we go.  On to the next tree.  The cottonwood. 

Dirt very carefully made all the correct cuts, checked and rechecked all the angles of the situation.  To make sure it would go exactly where he wanted, while the tree was still connected by a cell wall or two, he took my Lil’ Orange Tractor and put the bucket on the tree to give her a push. 

Holy moly it is going the wrong way! It starts leaning back as if it is going to fall right on the tractor, Dirt and all!!!

I am seein’ my widowhood flash before my eyes.  Insurance claims, possible part time work, having to hire a handy man, lonely nights (okay, that’s what I thought of first).

Actually I kid around about this but boy howdy I was worried, yep worried, alternating with praying, and resigning myself to dealing with insurance forms if that was what God would have me deal with.  And yes, I am still asking forgiveness months later for my lapse into worry.  It nearly paralyzed me. Not a good thing to be, paralysed, around a tree waiting to fall.  Not a good thing to be at any time, one of the many reasons God tells us not to.  So I worked on it right then and there but man it was hard to keep my eyes and ears open for instruction and not whirling with intense panic.  I could feel God helping me through the pull of that temptation.  I certainly was asking with every breath for Him to keep me from the sin of panic

Our good friend and neighbor pulled in right at the moment after Dirt got done climbing said tree, yes, the very tree that was now hanging by one cell wall.  He climbed it and the ladder next to it in order to attach the chains and cables he usually always uses when falling a tree (but on regular days he attaches them before cutting on the tree).

Bruce is elected to be on the Lil’ Orange Tractor while Dirt pulls the tree his direction with the Orange Beast.

Great, now my good friend, Terry’s, widowhood is flashing before my eyes as well, mmmm she seemed to be handling it way better than I was.

Within seconds the tree gets the clue that it cannot fall on the Lil’ Orange Tractor, Bruce, nor the electric lines.  HipHipHooray.

Bye Bruce, thanks.  He had only come over to pick up a package not spend and afternoon dodging trees.

So that is one of the stumbling blocks to early winter writing for me.  Not so much this event, but the lessons it ushered in. 

Most of the time I have a running conversation with my Creator.  I often feel the nudges this way and that from the Holy Spirit, being pulled up short on this or that, having something slowly come to illumination.  On the other hand, only a few times in my life have I had major, clear, fast and hot lessons come my way.  This was one of them.  And it has tentacles, quite a few.  It seemed to kick off a winter of lessons, hard to swallow lessons.  Hard.  But ever so necessary.

I know I have trouble with schedules, there is always something to knock me off a routine.  Dirt says it is mostly my own distracted brain, but  any way, I hope that at least once a week  I can write a bit on this until I’ve finished fleshing out the lesson I hope I have learned this winter.

It began with a big lesson on worry and panic, something I thought I had worked through over seven years ago. Never say you’re done with anything I suppose, so let’s call it a relesson eh?  A relesson with a twist.   That will be what I’ll file the posts on this under, “worry and panic” under “Spiritual Disciplines”.  Worry and Panic, big ugly sins indeed, more of a root of evil than money.   Behaviours and attitudes that sit in the lap of Self for sure.

So much for timed publishing, this was supposed to go up on Tuesday.