That's Called Life

Our Saturday began as most, up before the sunrise, a quick breakfast, and then packed up and headed to The Compound.  You’d think we’d get sick and tired of what seems like the same old-same old, every weekend, but we don’t. 

As we head east, and watch the beginning sunrise we talk about our plans for the day.  What chores we need to tackle how we’ll divide up the workload and when we plan on closing shop and heading home.  Most of the time it doesn’t ever really seem to happen the way we’d planned.   I don’t mean that in a bad way, just not how you would like to lay it out.  That’s called life, and most of the time it’s a blessing and not a burden.

We had plans to

Clean out the chicken run, and put down some new dry shavings.

Mow the yard

Clean out some of the weeds in the garden

Continue digging the hole for the container

Trim branches from an oak tree

A couple of guys that have become part of our extended family, Donnie and BJ were there when we arrived first thing in the morning.  Donnie climbed one of our oak trees to trim back some branches so the tractor trailer could deliver the container in this same area without hitting the tree.  He’s so good at what he does, it was about a half hour, and he had shimmied up the tree, and cut down the branches that were in the way.  One job done on the checklist.

I took care of the chicken run.  Cleaned things up, and laid down new wood shavings.  I loaded and unloaded around 20 wheelbarrow full loads of shavings.  It was really needed.  Helped dry things up in the run and gave them new things to scratch and bugs to eat.  They were very happy!  Another job done on the list.

I tried to mow the yard, but it was just too wet.  The grass needs to be mowed, but not at the expense of over working the mower itself.

Donnie and his brother made a delivery of fresh wood shavings/mulch earlier in the week.  They have access to wood chips and wood through their job and make a delivery or two for us when they can.  We seem to use it up as fast as they deliver it, but free is good, and it saves us the time of running to pick it up by the trailer load.  We’d need to make 2-3 trips for every 1 load they bring, and we wouldn’t get any wood for burning/grilling.

Well, it rained and rained some more at The Compound this past week, and made the ground very soggy, so when they made a delivery, their truck got bogged down.  They almost got stuck a few times.  Needless to say, we needed to fix the driveway in anticipation of our 40’ container delivery.  The Moose and BJ began the daunting task of moving wheelbarrow full loads of dirt to try and fill in the low areas.  We were in the middle 90’s and humidity levels were unbearable.  After a couple of loads, both had to change t-shirts.   Not fun. 

The Moose decided to enlist the help from down the street.  It cost $60/hour, and while we would have like to barter for services, our neighbor really needed the money.  So I guess, we all got what we needed.  He spent 4 hours moving dirt to fill in the driveway, and then he dug out the hole for the container.  All this while most of us sat looking on from under a shade umbrella.

I never did get to pulling any weeds in the garden.  It was too hot, and too daunting of a task for as tired as I was.

So this along with a few other things gets moved to later next week.  Where we’ll make plans that will likely change or not happen.  Funny how life gets in the way sometimes.