Three son-in-laws (who married three sisters, and Chad pictured here) were out helping their father-in-law this past Easter weekend clean up brush and fallen limbs around his 8 acre property. The day couldn’t have been more beautiful for that kind of work: dry, clear, and cool. Over the years, lots of small bushes and trees grow up to be nuisance plants that clutter the landscape, and branches fall from trees all the time, leaving lots to clean up.
My father-in-law Dennis has a lot of trees on his property, and thus, every few years, it takes a good cleaning out. There is still more to do, even after our work, as parts of his property have never been cleared from when they first bought the place. It has, and had, years of brush and growth that will take many weekends to finally clean up.
Dennis rented a wood chipper, and we spent most all day feeding its hungry blades, that reduced hours of efforts into a small pile of wood chips. I was amazed at how many limbs it took to make a small pile of sawdust.
Late in the day, one of the branches I was “killing” struck back at me, in its final throws of being ground up, in a last ditch effort to wound its tormentor. It reached out and gave me a good scratch on the left arm, a move that sent me to the E.R. wondering if I needed stitches. In the end, the doctor deemed it wasn’t deep enough to warrant stitches, and glued it back together. I then got a tetanus shot that has made my left arm sore, even now. It was funny, because I haven’t been back to my local church in a long time due to work, and lots of people saw me yesterday. They slapped me on the shoulder to say hello, and that was enough, with my shot, to about bring me to the floor. Oh well — next time I get scratched, I’ll already have had my tetanus booster shot.
I hope everyone enjoyed their Easter weekend . . .