Chainsaws and Ticks

Sadly with the warmer weather come the advent of the blood sucking tick kind around here.  Eww.  I hate me some ticks.  Luckily, so far, it is only the hellhound who is picking them up.  Mostly because she goes galumphing through the tall grass and that is where the little beggers like to hide out.  Wood ticks should be renamed Grass Ticks.  Of course not all of us hate tick season I think the hellhound loves it because every night we run our hands over her fur looking for ticks so she thinks she is getting this prolonged session of loving attention.  The wagging tail and the happy, happy panting is a real clue to how much she loves it.  What was it that Mark Twain said?  I wish I was as nice as my dog thinks I am. 

I've been feeling a little out of sorts this past week or so, not exactly sure why, I'm relatively healthy, I'm not hurt or achy, I'm not stressed, all seems to be right with the world.  Typically I'm a relatively well balanced, happy kind of girl, but every once in awhile I can get into a bit of a funk.  So I guess it's time for me to snap out of it.  One of the charters of the Old Shoes and Tea Society allows only a week of funky blueness in its members.  Coincidentally that is the charter I just drafted this morning.  Actually as I was writing this I realized what my problem may be, I think it's because I need a hair cut.  My hair is so long that it is driving me nutty.  I hate it when it hangs in my eyes and drapes itself over my ears.  Maybe I'm like a reverse Samson?  My super powers only manifest themselves when I am well groomed.  I guess I shouldn't mess with the natural laws of nature, time to get it hacked.  (I love how I can write "super powers" and "natural laws of nature" into the same thoughts.  It's so cognitive dissonance-y.)

Yesterday I decided to tackle a rose bush back behind the new garage (how do you like that segue).  Anyway this bush has been allowed to go unimpeded and grow like a crazy thing since I moved here.  And boy oh boy has it ever taken advantage of it.  Last year it had about a million bright pink blossoms on it but they seemed kind of sad and stunted.  I had zero time to spend on any grooming efforts so it turned into a science experiment gone awry.  So taking my trusty cutter snipper thingy, two rakes, a long handled snipper, and the quad and trailer, I straightened my back, squared my shoulders and marched towards it.  It fought back, quite valiantly I might add.  The thorns easily penetrated my gloves, and my clothes, and the long tendrils stuck to me like Velcro.  But I gritted my teeth and went to town on it.  Three trailer loads of snipped vines and accumulated leaves later I had won the war.  (Man!  I just realized I should have taken a before and after.  Dam, that would have made a good picture. Seeing as the parental unit hinted that she does not like the whole writing, writing, stuff and is only interested in updated pics.)  Now it looks like a rose bush with a Mohawk.  I did mange to find a menagerie of detritus under the leaves.  Along with a baseball, I found plastic dishes, plastic bags, and even fake silk green leaves.  WTF?  I mean really, who would put fake silk leaves on a rose bush?  Especially one which grows like a scifi creature which would require major military action to destroy it?  I think the word here is...anyway. 

After my last trip out to dispose of the evidence of my butchery I decided that it was the kind of day that required me to go and work on my birch grove project.  Mainly this involves cutting the alders out from between the birches which line the entry to the back forty trail.  Speaking of a science project gone crazy...those alders are like big tree weeds.  They have no redeeming qualities.  They don't get big enough to use as firewood.  They grow in stands that seems to fall onto the ground in clumps for no apparent reason.  They use up space and nutrients that real trees need.  They shed gross green pollen all over.  They make it almost impossible to get around in the bush.  So along with my cutter snipper thingy I grabbed my trusty Lulu, a rake, and an ax and headed out back.  Along the way I got a little distracted and decided to put in a new cross cut trail to the new back road development, lucky for me it went like butter, and I soon had a decent trail which will be quite usable even if we wanted to take the quad through.  Then I started on the alders.  Yeesh.  The good news is that I finally managed to punch a walkable trail through to the burning pile.  The bad news is that Lulu needs a new chain.  The bottom shark's teeth thingies that slide along in the bar slot got damaged when the chain came off.  That sucks on all kinds of levels.  (Okay now I'm wondering how much eye rolling would go on if a "for real" lumberjack guy read my description of my chainsaw. LOL) 

Well time for me to head to town and buy a faucet, get a haircut, and buy some grocks.