Enticement for Grampa

In case more encouragement is needed for Daddy/Grampa to come wield his chainsaw in December, here are some pictures of the magnolia tree. It should actually be pretty friendly, I think. Most of the branches I want to take off are in the 3-4" diameter range.

Supplies we have include an A-shaped aluminum ladder that is just barely tall enough to get on the roof (12 foot?) and a pole trimmer. Supplies needed: small chainsaw to borrow.

The tree from the front:


A closeup so one can see the number of smaller (3-4" diameter) branches in the lower part of the tree that need cleaning up:


The area around the base of the tree (also note all the smaller branches that I want to take out):


An oak hanging over the power lines in the back yard that we could mangle with the pole trimmer if we wanted some bonus fun.

More Halloween Photos

Here is a little Halloween slideshow!

She takes after her grocer grampa

Nimue's first urge when she got home with all of her Halloween candy after trick-or-treating was to carefully sort and inventory her candy. 72 pieces all told, most of which have already been consumed...

The garage ghost

Chad, happily soldering a new battery pack for his bike light in the newly organized workbench corner of the garage

I am the Great Pumpkin

The photographer also caught a shot of me during the Halloween parade at the farm event mentioned in the previous post. I wore it to be the mystery reader in Nimue's classroom on Friday too, much to the amusement of the kids and the fright of the office ladies. Much glue, sweat, and paint went into the creation of the mask over the last couple of weeks...

Halloween fun at the local vegetable farm

I took Nimue to a Halloween festival at a nearby vegetable farm in between rainstorms on Friday. Even in the city, one can still find sweet old-fashioned events like this, including a haunted greenhouse hay bale maze, apple cider pressing, corn-husk ghost making activities, and the like. Plus, one could still buy tomatoes and sweet peppers :) Nimue spent most of the time chasing another little boy and drawing pictures in the dirt, but was sufficiently photogenic that the volunteer photographer got a number of good pictures of her.