Getting the next thing done

Sometimes getting unstuck is the best thing I can do. These  two weeks I got several kidney stones in the way of progress out of the way.

• the tree trimmer came in with The Grande Dame and took out all the brush, pruned the apple tree and took down the weed elms that were growing where no elms had any business growing He left with his ginourmous dumptruck full to the rails with the chips from all the brush and branches.  Tree Trimmer guy is good with trees and inexpensive for what he does, as long as he is under supervision of The Grande Dame.  She has warned me that I must not use him if she is not supervising because he may show up either drunk or hung over.  That's just fine with me, She knows what she is doing.

• The claw foot tub and the fireplace insert are out of the basement and left in the company of Habitat who also took some awkward pieces of furniture and they will be back for the tools when  I get them sorted.
• The power chair and the diabetic equipment are going next, so the main floor is getting ready for carpet (bleagh) removal and then for paint and the laminate installation.
• The Grande Dame and I have removed 3/4 of the very last of the heaps of wooden detritus that were in the yard. Most of it was too big for us to move until I cut it up into manageable pieces. never underestimate the joys of a power saw
• After surveying what I would need to do now and in the future, I have decided that this is the last dumpster load I will have. The Dumpster itself is leaving.

  I have finally and at last come to the place where anything I need to throw out can be taken to the dump in my truck.  I have run out of massive quantities of things that I have to dispose of .  It took six months, but the majority of the mess outside and in has been cleaned up.

It still looks like a disaster in slow motion but it is a much improved disaster and I have learned how to cope with an overwhelming project. (saw it up)

Any one know someone who needs a whole lot of vinyl records? I have five copies of everything  Linda Ronstadt ever recorded and three of Tammy Wynette in gold Spandex and the bouffant from bride of Frankenstein.
Right now I am going to get cleaned up and eat, and then I am going to go out and dance,to celebrate my unstuckness.

I have a new best tool

The weather suddenly got nicer than it has been for way too long. Sunny weather and the mess outside is more compelling than the mess inside.  My friend who takes no prisoners came over to help and advise me on lilac pruning.  Apparently there is very little to it really, it is a matter of removing all the old growth and the dead branches and then letting the tender green whips grow up and out,
OK, so you take something that looks like this

and then after you are finished it looks like this

 

The amount  of brush this generates is amazing

That is just one lilac's worth of branches, and that isn't all of it.
Anyway, the tool that does this with a minimum of fuss and bother is a Sawsall.
It's my new friend.

Well what on earth is that?

Today I managed to get the flake board in the front yard sawn up and in the dumpster. The flake board was sitting on top of a two by platform and was used in the first part of sorting the mountain of trash, from the mole hill of good stuff when we can tell the trash from the good stuff. It's not always easy to tell.
So I was hauling the boards off and looked down into the two by foundation.... The more I looked the more elaborate it got, and it took a while to really understand it.  I was looking at a mouse estate.

There were three nests, and a whole complex of tunnels and what looked like a couple of store rooms divided up by the foundation boards that kind of set it up with walls or hedges. There under the platform was a fairly large mouse city, or perhaps a village.

It looked a bit like what you find when you turn a rock over and watch the ants frantically haul off the goodies that were under there, only much larger in diameter. I wondered where the mouse colony that was living in the junk on the back patio had got to.
Looks like they moved house into the platform.  I wonder where they will end up now because the platform is next to be leaving.
I hope that it doesn't rain or snow until I can take a picture of it.