I remember Tree Man.
He showed up at my front door one afternoon a couple of summers ago. We had a dying tree in the yard, and I'd called him, among others, to come and give me an estimate for its removal.
He had a sort of hippyish look to him. Longish fuzzy hair in a ponytail, full beard, John Lennon glasses. He had a sort of hippyish personality too. Very mellow and friendly. I soon learned that he and his tree service business were from the local hippie place just outside the city.
So I liked him, this hippie Tree Man, and I hired him to remove the tree. It almost seemed incongruent when he showed up a few days later, in his usual granola aura, driving a big diesel pickup pulling a trailer of power equipment.
And he made impressive short work of that tree. Several of the neighbor kids, in addition to our own kids, showed up to watch. All took delight in shouting "TIMBER!!" when the magic moment happened.
"Those all yer kids?", he asked in his hippie way.
"Nope, just three of 'em", I replied in a, hopefully, not too mother-from-suburbia way.
"Mmmm.... I've got 5 kids...", he countered in a rather conversation-while-sharing-marijuana way.
Good ol' Tree Man.
This summer, we discovered that another tree in the yard was needing last rites. It's a smaller tree than the last, so Chaco, Wolfgang, and I took it upon ourselves to put it out of its misery.
We hacked and sawed and pushed and pulled and hacked some more and sawed some more and pushed.... well, y'know. All that work reminded me of the ease with which Tree Man had removed the previous tree. But then, he did have all that equipment, and here we were, me and my two scrawny teenagers.
But we got it. It fell precisely where we'd hoped it would, and then we set about making little pieces of wood out of it.
That was a week ago today.
This morning, Magnum asked, "So'd you cut that tree down yesterday?" (We hadn't told him - remember that little Asperger's game we like to play?).
"Uhm, actually, it was last week", I revealed.
SO it only took him one week to notice. Never mind the fact that he had worked in the yard over the weekend. Never mind that it's a freakin' TREE! that's no longer THERE. One week only. That's pretty good, I'd say.
If a tree falls in the yard... ?
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6 comments:
I had the *cutest* arborist take a tree down a few years ago; his crew were fast and precise.
I sort of need to locate him due to a v. bad-looking diseased branch on a v. large maple right next to our house, but I forgot the name of his business and lost his card. Doh!
1. Good for you taking matters into your own hands! Now, can we call you hippie-chick?
2. Hey, a week to notice is better than most stuff around these parts here. Kudos to the hubster!
3. Can you send hippie-tree-guy my way? My retinas are becoming scarred with all the "lovely" people in their bathing suits at "Schlitterbahn"......ugh.
I have learned that almost no task is impossible for a mom and her kids. I was a kid on one of those teams for a few years growing up and we accomplished quite a few things that seem impossible now that I look back on them.
Good job.
Shoot, Abs, you should have hired my dad and I. We would have pushed it over, no charge lol
Marriage wouldn't be half as fun if you didn't play little mind games with your spouse!
LOL! I can definitely relate.
Did you feel sore or invigorated the next day?
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