Labor Day weekend, indeed

 Here's to all of you who don't know how to sit down and relax with a little umbrella drink over Labor Day weekend. We are right there with you. The Tuesday before we had a big storm including wind gusts up to 70 mph. Now, all you coastal people, I know, you're used to such winds. We are not. Neither are our trees. Hence the multiple day clean-up. The very top of one of our locust trees snapped off, taking multiple pine boughs down along the way. Two of the neighbors' trees went down, one along our property line. Generally just a mess. We have just about every type of tree that drops something. I think we are missing pear, obviously citrus and coconut, and hickory. We have small apples (from our sole remaining apple tree- we inherited four when we moved in), black walnuts, pinecones, cherries, acorns, pine needles, leaves, you name it. Locusts send down merry flurries of tiny leaves... and nasty twigs full of thorns. Osage oranges are also slyly thorny in addition to dropping those spider-repelling balls. Some of us like to go barefoot, but it is pretty darn treacherous to do out back, especially!

We initially felt really bad for the crews around town who were slated to pick up the piles until we saw how smart they were about it- one has the dump truck and the other has some big thing with "jaws" that open sideways so it scoops up entire piles to dump. Good thing, because I have gotten a handful that had something sharp in it and I rate it with absolutely no stars- would not recommend!