Peace and Quiet on the Pond

Saturday was to have been a quiet day. A few weeks ago I mentioned to a neighbor that I had some timber from a couple of trees affected by the ice storm of December that I was going to burn. He said he was going to rent a chipper to take care of quite a few trees he had on his property and that I could add mine to his. Saturday turned out to be the day.

About 9:00 I had gone outside to get the paper and noticed his SUV in his driveway with the chipper in tow behind it. By 10:00 his wife, son, the son’s friend and he had the chipper in place and started it up. I was still reading the paper when Debbie, who had noticed the noise and activity, encouraged me to get our timber over there before it was too late. I knew their pile of trees was going to take a while. But she insisted I get ours over there. Well, I had not even finished all my coffee but I know when to shut up so I got up and put on some work clothing, got my work gloves and went to work.

I spent 10 or15 minutes getting my pile of lumber to their chipper but felt guilty about just dumping mine and leaving. So three hours later we had reduced the huge pile of timber to a very small pile of wood chips. The hum and growl of the chipper brought several other neighbors running with some limbs of their own to add. I somehow resented them although I had done the same.

At 2:00 I sat down at our kitchen bar and ate some lunch. After lunch I noticed the rocks needed the weeds whacked. So the whirr of the weed whacker was heard for another hour. Shortly after that the neighbors' yard crew showed up and mowed and trimmed two entire yards in less time than it took me to weed whack. (see my blog of 03-19-2008)

Finally quiet and peaceful. Then Maverick reminded me I had promised to take him to the Tulsa Talon’s Arena Football game Saturday night. So, I cleaned up and it was off to Tulsa for a noisy indoor football game.

Sunday afternoon was beautiful but I did not get outside to enjoy it. I stayed in where it was quiet.