I’ve slowed down, nay almost stopped, blogging over the past two weeks. The reason is unusual and unfortunate: a tree fell on my house.
Yep! We had a 120+ year-old cherry tree behind our home — Grandma Cherry we called her. I’d been concerned about having a tree of this size too close to the house, but held off on doing anything too drastic because our kids loved the rope swing we’d hung from her many years ago. I just pruned deadwood and removed some limbs that overhung the house.
Long story short: we came back from a weekend camping trip to find the tree had split, and half of it had crashed down onto the roof.
Cue interviewing a lot of arborists and tree surgeons, and finding a one crazy chainsaw artist who was able to take the rest of the tree down safely and affordably, while leaving us the wood to burn over the next few years. Once the pro left, it’s been my chore to split and stack all that wood, and try to restore the yard to decent shape, and work on repairing the house (which happily wasn’t damaged too badly).
So, that’s my excuse. Much of my time has been (and continues to be) spent chopping wood — just like the Irish who settled the part of North Carolina where I live. I have at least been able to do so while listening to the new U2 album this week, but it has put most of my writing for this site on hold.
I do expect to get back into the swing of regular blogging in a week or two. By which time, I will have a whole new appreciation for the Scotch and Irish settlers who had to clear whole forests before they could even think of building their homes and planting crops.
Tags: emigrant adventures
Comments are now closed.
1 comment