Work day

I'm sad to say I didn't get any pictures cause I was too dirty to use a camera.  Ashley and I raise little "trees" from Arbor day... I use the term tree loosely since they come as 12" long twigs and with my black thumb maybe 1/3 of them live.  We had a crape myrtle and some other trees that are 3 years old and in need of transplanting.  We also had two new blueberry bushes to plant.  Dennis was quite excited to help with this.

We soon realized he doesn't have the muscles yet to be able to dig a hole but that didn't prevent him from trying. We both got a good chuckle with him tumbling off the shovel... along with a few whacks with the shovel on me.  There were a couple of shovel fulls with me holding the shovel and him trying to jump on it.  In the end we transplanted 4 trees and planted the two new bushes.  The crape myrtle replaced a small dead pine tree by the house and will look nice.  Dennis is scared of worms... in a silly scared way.  I threw one at him at which he let out a short yelp and rolled to the ground... soon turning to laughter.

During this Sam and Ashley decided they would earn money by picking up trash that had blown around.  I had to declare foul when they decided they would just pick up stuff from the trash dump along the creek.  Not that it was a bad thing but there is too much back there to get hurt on and the little dog keeps coming back with ticks from there.  The got lots of trash, 3 crutches, and a beach ball that is in still good condition.

After planting Dennis decided he wasn't interested in hanging around while I use the chainsaw.  Probably a good idea as I didn't want to have to keep an eye on him with me with a chainsaw and parts of trees falling from the sky.  He, Sam, and Ashley rode bikes.  His legs are getting so strong and I've noticed his gate when running is improving significantly.

Later they went inside and Sam helped me finish off cutting wood.  There were some big branches from dying trees I wanted to clear to give more sun to the trees behind them; several small trees that the winds/ice destroyed beyond recovery; a nice pine tree that the vines were killing that we cleaned up; and a fallen dead tree we cut up for firewood.  Still lots to do...