Big Job Number One

Suddenly the sun came out on Saturday and changed our plans for the day.  We threw a cooler, a shovel, a kid, and a shaky plan into the truck and headed to Carmine to "work on our property." I borrowed a chainsaw from my friend, Bill, took another friend, Bev, up on her willingness to help cut stuff up, and we tackled the impossible.

After the first trek around the property a few weeks ago, my memory of the place looked something like this:

It felt a little like "what in the hell have we done to ourselves."

Once we got back out there on Saturday, I have to say, I felt like we could conquer the darkness and honest to god, start clearing a spot for our little tree house.  By the way, it's still too muddy to drive onto the property, so rubber boots were the fashion of the day.

Follow your Golden Rule, Christy - Take it in Small Chunks & Win Big

I'm no stranger to impossible tasks. In fact, I'm kind of good at figuring out how to achieve impossible results, so I decided to follow my own Golden Rule for Tackling the Impossible.

We walked the very front of the property because that's about how much is walkable at all. I thought about the pond, and decided that it's entirely possible it was formed naturally by decades of erosion.

We walked back towards the west property line from the pond and decided we could create our first little space near a cluster of gorgeous post oaks that were hidden behind brush and dead cedars. The spot is far enough away from the pond to give us time to figure out how to improve the water feature and repair current erosion and prevent it in the future.  In the meantime, it wouldn't be that much work to start clearing a path to that first building spot. So Tammy grabber her garden loppers and went to town. 

Baby, I love you, but you were in over your head.

It  was time to pull out the chainsaws and get to destroying dead cedars and the brush that surrounded them. 

Fifty is the New Twenty

Damn straight it is!

Bev and I still have both of our legs, and the bloodshed was minimal as we busted out the saws and ripped up a single tree that was actually about eight trees grown and fused together. We both turned 50 this year. Neither one of us was chomping at the bit to cut up another tree. One was enough for the day. The other 500 trees could wait.

There was no need to overdo it... 

So we drank a few beers.

No Need for Hopelessness

Actually, this will all come together faster than we think.
When faced with an overwhelming problem, taking tiny steps is how you find the solution. As we knock out tiny clusters of trash trees and dead wood, we'll really start to see the possibilities here.

We woke up this morning with aching backs, and we knew, by yesterday's experience, we do need to buy a tool shed to store the tools that have been laying on the floorboard of the truck. We can also store good lumber there. We'll make day trips on the weekends and start clearing space for a driveway, and then our little tree house.

Big Job Number One is complete.