You are bored with the willow tree. I know it. I kind of am as well . . . but it is still in the backyard.  A lot of it is piled up like an horizontal stockade wall, but somehow it seems everywhere. Look:

Okay, this is what I call “the west zone” and it is over south of the Wheel Horse Stable. I really don’t call it “the west zone” – that just came to me as I was exporting the photos from iphoto. But, yes, for you purists, it is the westerly portion of the area in which the tree fell.

I swiveled to my left and here is the “zone” that reaches up to the drive to the old diesel garage.

Here, I just tilted the camera to look right in front of my feet.

And this is the smoke of the beginning bonfire which consists of the branches we gathered on Saturday. We were hunter/gatherers. We hunted for branches (which was easy), gathered them into a pile by using the little tractor to pull bundles, and then, by this time, the almost 90 degree weather fried our brains and we got all mixed up about hunting and gathering and cooking our food and just set the whole blasted thing on fire. We have a lot left.

It is amazing how the idea of making stools and souvenirs out of carved-up logs and branches is just vanishing from my brain. The trunk is still there, you know. It’s, oh, about 10 feet tall with two sharp bunny ears. The horizontal stockade is east of it. It’s intimidating.

After we called it a day because two of us are 61, we hotdogged and hamburgered ourselves and then waited for it to get dark for fireworks. Sort of. Of the four of us, the younger 61 person stretched out on a patio loveseat on the porch; the other sixty-oner watched part of a movie with the two under 20 and then the latter got antsy and started shooting off noise things.

The porch oldie got up and managed to take part in a plot to set off a smoke bomb right below the porch window where The Der Bingle 61-er was sitting. And then to light a batch of fire crackers. I have forgotten the dogs – they were upset with the noise and barked and ran and hid over and over again.

Then it got dark and we heard other booms from people more patient than we; I lay down on the loveseat again . . . and Sydney lay on top of me. It was cozy. Then he got off and I got chilled and got a blanket – but, not to fear, the morning sun soon came and zoomed the temperature back up.

I filled a wheelbarrow with little sticks this morning and then said to heck with it and Cameron pushed it over by the shed.

I think I am going to read up on willow bark usage and just periodically chew the trunk next time.

You can see me standing there, can’t you, in my shorts with big pockets and shirts with vents and more pockets and just pulling pieces of bark off nonchalantly. Or perhaps I will go native and gnaw.

Der Bingle bought a machete to deal with the tree; he loves it. He has a sharpener for it and everything and today was drawn to Rural King to gaze at other cutting tools. I think he needs a planter’s hat and we all should sip cocktails on the veranda.

That would be if we had a veranda; we have a half-collapsed deck. I guess we lack the ambiance. Of course, if we took the half collapsed part and collapsed it entirely, maybe we could call it a veranda. Little lights strung from pole to pole, music drifting out through the window. Oh, yeah, I’m supposed to download “A Boy Named Sue.” Ah, we can’t get away from ourselves.