Tree Fishing

After a pretty intense week of 10-hour days at the office, it was great to set the clock back one hour. Plus it was good to lose myself in good ol' yard maintenance. I cut down eight or nine noxious mulberry bushes that were taking over the lilacs. Felt good about having to wait behind only two trucks at the dump. Why they must make people with yard clippings that can be dumped for free, and with which they sell compost for profit, I cannot figure out. To add insult to injury, the dump-nazi ignores you at the window for a couple minutes pretending to be tending to important other things before waving you on.

So back to the yard, I had more anxiety to burn off and a limb that had broken off in a snow storm two years ago, and hung up in a lower branch, was now the target of my obsessions. It was forked into a branch about forty feet up. Last year I tried to dislodge it from a ladder, and tree-pruner. I lost grip of the pruner and it came crashing down and I quit before someone got hurt. This time I cast a heavy washer attached to a fishing line and looped it over the branch on the second try. Then I attached a rope to the fishline and with Dix very delicately pulling and me gently whipping the rope, over the branch it went. The branch shifted and then nestled even more solidly in place. Now I tied a knot in the rope to hopefully snag the limb and snag it did but dislodge it did not. Dix said you really got to jerk it, which is a woman's answer to all mechanical problems, but she was right this time and down the rascal came!