A chilly but not unbearable night and the furnace provided heat for breakfast, so life is good. The missing salt & pepper containers have finally shown up! Opened (what I thought was) a full box of Pop Tarts this morning only to discover the fugitive S&P cowering inside. An absolutely beautiful day, winter jacket (briefly) in the morning to short-sleeve tee-shirt in the afternoon with nary a mosquito seen all day. Built 12 more feet of the walkway. As I was putting the stringers on the second set of in-ground posts noticed that the 14″ diameter triple beech which the walkway was about to pass by was without bark and rotten around ¾ of its circumference. Though not dead, it certainly wasn’t going to live much longer. Looking at the way the tree was growing / leaning and the surrounding canopy, there was only one direction it was ever coming down… straight across the walkway and into the lake. Decided to take down the beech before it caused serious damage and a monumental problem once the walkway was done. Getting the tree down… no problem. Getting the tree out of the woods… not so easy. Needed all 70 feet of my logging chains to reach from where the tree was laying in the water to the closest I could get the Kubota to the scene of the crime. Then used the backhoe to haul the tree 8 feet closer, then 8 feet closer, then 8 feet closer… until I finally got it to where the skidder can get hold of it… sometime in June.
