Carnage

Well evidently absence makes the heart grow fonder - the standard of grovelling in my inbox is most impressive. If you haven't already, you have 'til Monday midnight to get your flattery in before I ask an independent person to pull two names from a handy hat.

Now what will all the saw till excitement, I neglected to tell of the deforestation that went on here at Alf Towers this time last week. In recent months it's seemed that fate has decreed my lot should be to move heavy lumps of wood on Fridays, and last week certainly didn't buck the trend. Bill The Fish (Not to be confused with Fulchester United's star 'keeper, Billy The Fish) door-to-door fishmonger and occasional chainsaw-wielder, has featured in the virtual pages of this blog before. For example. He was contracted to come and fell a laburnum that bit the dust this summer, and much to my chagrin, to lop a couple of branches off "my" eucalyptus too. Watching him do his stuff is generally enough to give any mildly 'elf'n'safety-conscious person the screaming ab-dabs, and but I managed to look long enough to get a pic for once.

And the resultant carnage. I felt quite sick - not least because the damn stuff is bugger all use for anything. Grr.

Oh, except for cats to pose artistically next to the felled flowers.

Of rather more use were the branches and trunk of the laburnum, which were duly sealed with wax at the ends and stowed under the potting shed bench. That's where the regularly scheduled Friday wood moving came in. It was a bit of a struggle to find room in amongst the existing bits of yew, plum, apple, pittosporum, etc.

One of these days I'll actually take a lump of stuff out from under there and do something with it on the lathe. Maybe. But it's like clamps, isn't it? You can never have too much wood...