working weekend

The temps set records last weekend, but, as an old friend said to me once, I'm extremely goal oriented, and I had set a goal to mow the lawn, so that's what I did on Saturday. A word about my lawn-mowing style. I do it for the exercise, so I use a hand-powered reel mower. And I mow one-handed, standing sideways to the mower and pushing it with one hand to my right. Or left, wherever the uncut grass is. If you mix up the direction (right or left) and arm (also right or left, duh), and which way your knuckles face on the handlebar, you get eight different exercises, not to mention taking the occasional break of pushing the mower ahead of you in more or less the traditional way. I've done it this way since high school.
It happens I lock the dog in the house and let the chickens run loose in the yard so they can pick bugs and eat the grass while I mow. Naturally the dogs needed to be let out to relieve himself, so I take him out on the leash. He likes to walk out to the far end of the property (I mow only the yard around the house, not the pasture). When I got to the far fence line, I discovered a neighbor's tree had come down in the last storm! The trunk had broken off about five feet above the ground and the tree fell across two fence lines and the thicket of vines, thorn bushes, and honeysuckle between them.
Guess what I did on Sunday.

Click to enlarge. If you look closely, in the exact center of the picture you can see the end of the trunk where I finally stopped, a foot or so this side of the neighbor's fence and a couple feet in the air. You should also be able to make out our fence, across the lower half of the photo. And there's firewood scattered around that I haven't brought up to the house yet. A guy can only do so much.