By the Side of the Road

Ron was up in the tree. Up on a branch shooting off from a branch, he shimmied up there with his electric chain saw and now was sawing off great hunks of Ash.

We were opening up a hole in the sky, pulling back the frantic tangle of just-budding branches, opening a hole for the sun to shine down on the Monterey Oak.

And while Ron was up in the tree sawing branches and throwing them down where they landed (thud!) on the lawn, we lopped off the finery and bundled it up, bound tightly with twine, arrayed neatly in piles. And Ron got his gas saw to cut the big branches into shorter ash logs, which we stacked one on one by the side of the road.

It is gray outside today: dull clouds in the sky, and rumbling thunder since 5:00am. A steady rain is falling, and lightning accompanies the rumbling, sometimes near, sometimes far.

Outside in the street, the City of Austin truck has come by. Three men in yellow raincoats stand in the downpour with water rushing in the gutter past their feet. One, with a burning cigarette hanging from his mouth despite the rain, stands and watches as the other two pick up the bundles and the logs neatly piled. They throw it all into a great yellow grinder towed behind their truck.

And in 30 seconds those three, or rather those two, have ground into mulch that which took us the better part of a morning to saw and to cut and to lop and to tie and to pile in neat piles by the side of the road.

10:55:47 AM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []