Nice neighbors

April 15, 2020 – Nice neighbors

         Sunday night’s storm of high winds and heavy rains passed through from late evening into the wee hours of Monday morning.  The gusts of winds and driving rain had awaken me several times.

         Morning sun falls on my front door and typically, I open my glass storm door peer out along my front walk to admire whatever is in bloom and sniff the air for temperature. 

         What’s that? Limb down or a tree?  Barefoot I step out into the cool morning and pad my way up the cool, wet sidewalk to the drive to investigate.

         A huge limb has sheared off from high above the front Bradford Pear and crashed down half covering the driveway – blocking in my car. 

[The picture is deceiving, much bigger than it looks.]

         I have no place to go, really during this “stay-at-home” scene, except that I always want my vehicle to be able to rush to the emergency room at a moment’s notice. [This is a built in reflex, when it snows here in the South, us Yankees are the only ones who dig out in this neighborhood instead of waiting for the snow to melt.]

         I advise my husband that I might need his help once I cut the greened out part off the downed limb, thinking I can handle this myself with my loppers and a handsaw.

         Later, geared up in garden clothes and wielding my trusty loppers, I attack the limbs that are under 2-inches in diameter.  My objective, cut off all the green leafed out limbs to reduce the weight of the limb.   Good thing, the huge limb is completely sheared off from the tree, so no one will have to climb up and cut it off; but, bad news, it is resting precariously on branch ends above what I call my “Daddy’s prize ferns” display.

         It is merely a matter of pacing oneself, snip, snip, snip – some more difficult than others, then drag the 5 to 6 foot leaved branches down the drive and toss them into the bed of the pickup truck.  Snip, snip again, continue the process and use caution that the limb doesn’t flip over and lurch at me.

         Darn, the branch is as large as my thigh – I won’t be able to cut that with a hand saw.  We don’t happen to have a working chainsaw anymore.

          After an hour of work, I can gingerly back my car out of the drive and onto the lawn without scratching the side of it.  As I park and get out of my car my neighbor advances out his front door half way across his lawn and shouts out to me.

         “Have you got a chainsaw?”

         “No,” I yell back.

         “I will be back in about an hour with my chainsaw to cut it up for you.”

         “Thanks Randy, that is sweet of you.”

         I continue on the green limbs that I can manage with the loppers.  The back of the pickup truck is just about overflowing.

         When I’ve cut all the greened out branches I can, I have the foresight to grab a couple of cages I use over tender plants to keep the feral cats off and plunk them over Daddy’s emerging ferns, - the fiddle heads are so delicate at this stage.  Yes, that will keep the chainsaw operator’s feet off them.

         I don’t want to lose those ferns, I have no way of getting any more, Mom and Dad’s home sold a few years back.  Dad had drifts of soft ferns that nestled up against the stonewall along the road in front of their home.  They were beautiful, and occasionally you’d sight a chipmunk or two  darting in and out into their home in the stonewall.  They are a bit of my childhood and I want to retain them at all costs.

         Later in the day, Randy heads over to cut up the wood.  

         I call out the front door, “Randy, I’ve got to caution you about where you can put your feet up there on the hillside . . .” 

         I explain about the ferns and where they are and why I have cages over them. “Yeah, you have a nice garden here, we see you out in it all the time.” He understands and steps around the cages as he works.

         As he cuts, I carry off the 4-foot lengths of limb to the pickup truck and pitch them over the end of the tailgate.  They are much heavier than I expected.  As he continues up toward the larger radius of the limb, I can’t even lift them.

         He is so very careful about Daddy’s ferns, and due to the weight hauls the last four segments of the downed limb to the truck for me.  He made fast work out of that.

         He turns off the chainsaw and then we chat about the matters of the day, how Forest Hills, a large subdivision, got hit hard with downed trees, about the Corvid-19 virus and the two deaths so far, and about who in the neighborhood is out of work because of it. 

         He is a magpie to say the least, but he is in-the-know because he is also a volunteer fireman.  Randy isn’t handsome, but he sure looks mighty fine when you see him carrying a chainsaw in one hand with a smile on his face and you have a downed tree. He loves helping out a neighbor in need.

         Thank you, Randy.