Tree-pruning, Picture-hanging, Etc.

We have yet to tackle the baseboards (am clearly suffering from inhibitions on that subject. Perhaps rum-and-cokes might help? Did wonders for my dissertation, after all.) Somehow, my grand master plan got a little derailed. Our riding lawn mower slipped a belt this morning (during what was my second voyage as skipper), so I tried to tackle the remaining yard using our little push mower, but after a while of battling that lush, thick grass all this crazy rain has engendered, it ran out of gas. Having been twice thwarted in a big project, I spent the rest of the day doing piddly little projects (in the air conditioning whenever possible--much preferable).

For example, we've got a little live oak in our east yard that has--so far as I can tell--never in its life been pruned. It was all shrubby at the bottom, blocking the view of the house, and every last one of its crotch angles was too narrow. It's like the tree sank into depression during a troubled adolescence and decided to commit a very, very, very slow form of suicide. http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/envirohort/426-500/426-500.html

Unfortunately, pretty much all of the fullness of the tree on one side seems to have come from these low-growing, badly angled branches. When I was done with it, it looked like this:

Picture added 8 sept 2007--MU

So all in all, I didn't get that sense of satisfaction and triumph I was looking for. However, it needed to be done, and the sooner the better, since it gives the tree the chance to change its ways before it gets to be too big.

I unpacked a few of the remaining boxes, hung some photos in the living room (it did help--it feels a little more in scale in there now--not so many howling blank spaces), and washed and ironed the tablecloths for our end tables.

Not quite the tour de force I had in mind. I'm taking tomorrow off of work, though, so maybe we'll get a little more done on our second take.