Preparing for the winter

On friday evening old man told us he'll come at eleven am to fell our last remaining silver willow. We had five or six of them here, but they grow so fast to huge monsters which produce tremendous amounts of dried branches and sticks and even pieces of bark, and of course there is the impenetrable layer of dead leaves every autunm. Others were felled when we started to build the extension.

This one was planted as a twig about 40 years ago, it's diameter was now over 50cm. Annual rings were over 1cm thick - not very usual aroud here. It is not the most valuable fire wood, it produces masses of ashes, but it will provide us warmth on next winter.

So, old man came driving his tractor at 9:30, first he took down one big branch (which narrowly missed my precious damson bush). Then the whole tree (which also didn't hit my damson). After that it was only matter of chopping off branches and cutting the trunk... Yeah.
Now we have sunlight in downstairs much earlier in spring. So much light!

By noon we had dragged and lugged all the logs and thicker branches to the pile. Most of rest of branches were dragged to two huge heaps, and most of dry sticks and branches were burning. And when there is fire burning, there are wieners to roast...

I'm an office worker, so I was exhausted by three o'clock. I cleaned my glass greenhouse to be ready for plants (not much needed, because I had made most of it in autunm when I was hoping i could start my growing season in the polytunnel). I had heated the sauna already, so we just took 'Suma for a walk (which she really didn't need because she had been running around the whole day) and then we took the most rewarding sauna bath, ate some cheese on toast and coleslaw, tried to play few rounds of Scrabble and went to bed.
A nice productive day.

Today I was so sick (not because of yesterday) I hardly could make the first 'Sumawalk. By the afternoon I had found the right pills, but it was too late to do anything outside. So instead I observed four cranes right next to our field (they are really big birds). Oh yes, my ankle is sore because I hit it with a small log i was dragging with log tongs - I was wearing my boots but momentum was too much... But if I wear right kind of footwear it doesn't hurt. I can't currently wear my safety boots, but I hopefully don't need them until friday.

I'm thinking I need to plant another silver willow somewhere in our plot, haven't found the right place yet. Silver willows have been growing here more than a century, there is still left some of the originals around the old fish ponds. I have ten acres of land and can't find a place for a one lousy tree.

I have still a big mess to clean on the yard, maybe we might even have a decent lawn now. I wanted to sow some seed today, but it must wait another day.
Logs must be cut and split, but it cannot be done before yard is clean of snow and dried a little bit.