Memorial Day Weekend 2013

Memorial Day Weekend 2013. The big maple-again. I got to sleep in every day to 6:00 a.m. I had been working 10 hour days for the previous ten days including the weekend at my regular job and getting up at 4:30 a.m. every day. Losing the previous weekend put me a little behind in my plans.

I had one pile of wood to cut and split before moving everything to the wood shed. I had planned on doing this Saturday but only managed to get it cut before going to Sacha’s mom’s place for dinner and bit of a break.

I finished splitting the rest of the wood Sunday and moved all of the cut and split wood to the shed with the tractor. The tractor probably saved me close to a day’s worth of work.  This huge time savings is why I leave the loader bucket on the tractor even though it is a pain most of the time because the tractor was not intended to have a loader on it. 

Monday I finished cleaning up around the maple stump as long lines of holiday traffic zoomed by on Highway 20. I started stacking the wood in the shed and got about two-thirds done. A couple of hours should finish the job. I also moved the cows back to the home pasture.

One other thing worthy of note, I heard Swainson’s thrushes Saturday evening. Sacha said she had been hearing them for several days prior to that. I had been listening for them but evidently missed hearing them or just didn’t pick them up out of the normal background noise that I am used to and half ignore.

These birds are kind of non-descript brown but have a beautiful song which they sing at dusk and in the morning. For many years I did not know what these birds were called though I was familiar with them from a young age. Their song signaled the start of summer for me when I was a kid. I believe they winter in Mexico and maybe other places. They usually show up here around the end of May and are usually gone sometime around the end of July-or at least they quit vocalizing at that time.

P.S. If the reader is getting tired of hearing about the big maple, I’m pretty tired of it myself and can’t wait to get on with other things.

Saturday morning. Last pile of wood to cut up. 

Last pile of wood cut up. 

Beginning of day Sunday. Last pile of wood remaining to be split. 

Sunday morning. Last pile of wood split up. 

Beginning of process of moving wood to shed. 

End of day Sunday. 

Beginning of day Monday.

Brush and wood scraps cleaned up from work site. 

Beginning of stacking wood in shed. 

End of day Monday. 

End of day Monday. Wood remaining to be stacked.