August 26, 2007

There are many benefits to retirement. Most of the time, we can go anywhere at anytime and do whatever we want. Not much keeps us from having fun. For the last two days we have been at my brother’s house cleaning up the fallen trees. Also there to help was, Bob’s daughter, Julie and her two girls, Tammy and Melissa.

Janet, Julie and Melissa unloading small limbs from the cart.

Julie, Tammy and Melissa moving the small limbs to the burn pile.

I used the chain saw while Bob used the tractor to push the tops to the burn pile.

This is one of the few times when Casey, Bob's dog, wasn’t running around checking on everyone. Locust trees have small thorns that can hurt if they stick you. Everything came to a halt when Casey got one in his front paw. Melissa, Tammy, Julie and Janet were called on to hold him while Bob removed the thorn. He is good as ever now.

It is nice to have a Mom around to remove those nasty splinters.

Now it’s day 2 of the clean up. As you can see, I am still using the chain saw, Bob continues driving the tractor, Janet is loading the heavy pieces in the bucket and Char takes the pictures when not helping load and cleaning up the small stuff.

Looking at his expression, you can imagine what Bob is thinking. He is happy that I am here to give him some helpful tips on how to replace the chain on his saw. Just kidding.

Here I am standing in the tractor’s bucket and using a hand saw to remove a limb that is on one of Bob’s storage buildings.

It’s looking better. You can see a leaning tree that still needs to be removed and a couple piles of the small limbs that will be burned later. Bob will have someone come in and remove the stumps and roots in the next few weeks. Bob wants to remove several more of the messy locust trees. His neighbor will cut them down for the wood.

This is one of the piles of wood we cut. Bob's son, Rick, wants this for when he goes camping.

I think we all have a few achy muscles now. Neither Charlotte nor I have done this much physical labor in quite a while. I am glad we were here to help and I know our assistance was greatly appreciated. It was fun being with Bob and his family again.