I have a new nemesis.
It is not an evil villain type of nemsis or even a human nemesis: it is a tree stump nemesis.
When we bought our home 15 years ago it had five crab apple trees, which, in my opinion, are the most worthless trees in the world because you can't eat the fruit. I guess you an make jam out of it, but who wants to?
And those millions of tiny little apples mean the tree has to be sprayed as if it were a real fruit tree, which is a pain in the posterior.
It also pains me to spend good money on something as worthless as a crap, er, I mean crab tree.
So within the first year, three of the infernal wooded growths fell to the chainsaw, but the other two I left in.
I spent years pruning the one in the backyard to grow along our fence line so it will block out the school that is directly behind my house and I am happy to say I succeeded quite well.
It is still a stupid crab tree, but at least it serves a purpose.
Sitting in the front yard of my humble home was another crab apple tree. True, it looked beautiful when in full bloom, but that only last a couple weeks and then it is just a useless, growing lawn ornament.
I left it in for all these years because my kids and their friends liked to clumb on it and who am I to deny a youngster the age-old thrill of climbing a tree.
However, the kids are older now and have no interest in climbing the tree, so I finally had the chance to convert it into firewood.
That left a stump in the yard from what was once a 30-year-old apple tree.
No problem, I have pulled many stumps in the past. Growing up, my parents had two acres with lots of trees and I can remember spending the better part of a summer digging out five poplar trees that were at least 50 years old.
That meant they had massive roots, so I spent hours digging with a shovel and chopping with an axe. Digging, chopping, digging, chopping...
My dad always warned me to wear leather boots for such work, but one day (when he was not home) I decided running shoes would do just fine. I took a mighty swing with the axe only to have it bounce off the root and sink into my foot.
I froze and waited for the pain. I waited...and waited but no pain came. I pulled out the axe and realized the blade had gone perfectly between my toes and embedded into the sole of my shoe.
After that, I always wore my work boots.
Anyway, the stump I am dealing with now is just as evil, with roots the size of an elephants leg. Well, maybe not quite that big, but those are some very large roots.
Junior needed gas money (what teen doesn't) so I traded him some money for a bit of time hacking away at the stump.
He quickly learned digging out a stump sucks.
He worked hard on it for a couple of hours, but the stump would not even wobble let alone fall over.
It is good for a young lad to do some old-fashioned physical labour and it is even better for dad to let him do it.
Having earned his gas money, he vacated the job mumbling something about a chainsaw and couple sticks of dynamite, which meant it was once again my turn to tackle the stump from hell.
A lot of hacking, digging and the occasional bad word has gone into removing this stump, but so far it refuses to release its grip on Mother Earth.
But I am stubborn and will not stop until the stump and its evil root system are vanquished.
It is me or the stump and the yard ain't big enough for both of us.
Copyright 2015, Darren Handschuh
Showing posts with label tree. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tree. Show all posts
Friday, April 10, 2015
Friday, December 12, 2014
Lighting up the Yuletide night
The plan was simple enough: every year I would purchase another string of Christmas lights and by the time the Missus and I were married 100 years, I would have enough lights tacked onto the house it could be seen from space.
However, as we all know, things don't always go as planned. Actually, they rarely go as planned.
Initially, I bought several strings of lights at once because I did not decorate our rental unit and when be finally managed to scratch enough together to buy a house, having just a single strand lighting up the Yuletide night would look pathetic.
So, I bought a strand for every year we had been married to that point. It was enough to give the house a festive feel and my plan was well underway.
Then one day as I was walking my then elementary-aged kids to school, my son asked why I took the lights down.
Some Grinch has pilfered a good portion of my pretty lights. At least half the lights were gone. The Yuletide dirtbag had simply grabbed a strand, pulled and took off with his ill-gotten goods.
Whoever took the lights did not put a lot of effort into their act of skullduggery and grabbed the easiest ones they could. They left a few strings still attached to the tree, but it was far from the extravagant light show it had once been.
Hoping the thieving little, um, er, person would get a lump of coal for Christmas, I trudged down to the local mega-store where I bought some replacement strands.
The lights were back on and there were no more acts of holiday barbarism. Until the next year that is, when more strands were stolen.
The strand-a-year plan was officially dead – just like my Christmas light display. But I refused to give up and on Dec. 27 I bought several more strands – on sale – and made plans for next year.
I would put the lights up higher where they could not be easily reached. The tree next to the sidewalk would have to go through Christmas naked even though it looked really cool when the snow covered the lights.
The plan worked and no lights were removed without my consent.
While I was taking care of the outside show of celebration, my wife was looking after the decorations inside.
I never had a Christmas tree when I was a kid, my parents did not believe in it. I did not have my first Christmas tree until after I married. We were young, I was going to college and finances were scarce so we bought the cheapest tree we could find.
It cost $5 and was the quintessential Charley Brown Christmas tree. It was small, spindly and lopsided, but it was the coolest Christmas tree I had ever seen.
Since then, our finances and subsequent tree budget has grown so now, 26 Christmases later, we get a decent tree.
Which is good, because each year the Missus purchases a decoration to represent the year that was. She also buys special ornaments for the children each year and that means we have a lot of decorations to cram onto a tree.
Eventually, we will be looking at a California redwood Christmas tree because a Canadian pine tree just will not be large enough to hold everything.
Every year it takes a little longer to decorate. Not only are there the decorations we purchased, but ones the children made at school over the years, so that little tree is drooping under the weight of it all.
Do the math: three kids, each doing seven years of elementary school and each making at least one ornament per year. That alone is 21 ornaments and we have managed to keep almost all of them.
The kids get a real kick out of seeing ornaments they made when they were little, and they are by far my favourite ornaments inside or out.
Copyright 2014 Darren Handschuh
However, as we all know, things don't always go as planned. Actually, they rarely go as planned.
Initially, I bought several strings of lights at once because I did not decorate our rental unit and when be finally managed to scratch enough together to buy a house, having just a single strand lighting up the Yuletide night would look pathetic.
So, I bought a strand for every year we had been married to that point. It was enough to give the house a festive feel and my plan was well underway.
Then one day as I was walking my then elementary-aged kids to school, my son asked why I took the lights down.
Some Grinch has pilfered a good portion of my pretty lights. At least half the lights were gone. The Yuletide dirtbag had simply grabbed a strand, pulled and took off with his ill-gotten goods.
Whoever took the lights did not put a lot of effort into their act of skullduggery and grabbed the easiest ones they could. They left a few strings still attached to the tree, but it was far from the extravagant light show it had once been.
Hoping the thieving little, um, er, person would get a lump of coal for Christmas, I trudged down to the local mega-store where I bought some replacement strands.
The lights were back on and there were no more acts of holiday barbarism. Until the next year that is, when more strands were stolen.
The strand-a-year plan was officially dead – just like my Christmas light display. But I refused to give up and on Dec. 27 I bought several more strands – on sale – and made plans for next year.
I would put the lights up higher where they could not be easily reached. The tree next to the sidewalk would have to go through Christmas naked even though it looked really cool when the snow covered the lights.
The plan worked and no lights were removed without my consent.
While I was taking care of the outside show of celebration, my wife was looking after the decorations inside.
I never had a Christmas tree when I was a kid, my parents did not believe in it. I did not have my first Christmas tree until after I married. We were young, I was going to college and finances were scarce so we bought the cheapest tree we could find.
It cost $5 and was the quintessential Charley Brown Christmas tree. It was small, spindly and lopsided, but it was the coolest Christmas tree I had ever seen.
Since then, our finances and subsequent tree budget has grown so now, 26 Christmases later, we get a decent tree.
Which is good, because each year the Missus purchases a decoration to represent the year that was. She also buys special ornaments for the children each year and that means we have a lot of decorations to cram onto a tree.
Eventually, we will be looking at a California redwood Christmas tree because a Canadian pine tree just will not be large enough to hold everything.
Every year it takes a little longer to decorate. Not only are there the decorations we purchased, but ones the children made at school over the years, so that little tree is drooping under the weight of it all.
Do the math: three kids, each doing seven years of elementary school and each making at least one ornament per year. That alone is 21 ornaments and we have managed to keep almost all of them.
The kids get a real kick out of seeing ornaments they made when they were little, and they are by far my favourite ornaments inside or out.
Copyright 2014 Darren Handschuh
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