Mission Accomplished!

No matter what else is going on, there is always time to photograph a beautiful sunset.
No matter what else is going on, there is always time to photograph a beautiful sunset.

There is a joke I used to tell. Robert Oppenheimer and Erico Fermi are in the bunker at the Trinity test in New Mexico in July 1945. After the bomb goes off, they turn to each other, high-five, and Oppenheimer says, “fission accomplished!”

I stopped telling that joke because so few people got it or laughed at it.

This was the scene of my driveway blocked by huge portions of a maple tree that had broken off July 11 during a severe thunderstorm. The tree is now about three stories tall, which amazes me, since I pulled it out of George and Dorothy's garden as a leafless, 24-inch stick, and planted it in our front yard, in about 2006.
This was the scene of my driveway blocked by huge portions of a maple tree that had broken off July 11 during a severe thunderstorm. The tree is now about three stories tall, which amazes me, since I pulled it out of George and Dorothy’s garden as a leafless, 24-inch stick, and planted it in our front yard, in about 2006.

Flash forward to May 1, 2003 with George Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, declaring “mission accomplished!”

Well, my most recent mission has been accomplished. After more than three weeks of cutting, pruning, sawing, and dragging, I finally got the mess of tangled branches cleaned up after a July 11 severe thunderstorm wrecked a huge number of trees in the Byng area.

This was the chaotic scene under my 100-year+ old black walnut after the thunderstorm.
This was the chaotic scene under my 100-year+ old black walnut after the thunderstorm.

As I cleaned and cut and lifted and dragged, I got into one really great rhythm after another, with my ipod shuffling song after song that made the work fun, and very good for my body. I felt strong and healthy.

I have no trouble identifying poison ivy, as in this shot of some very classic poison ivy growth. The reason I got a bit of it on me is that a few of the hairy vines on the walnut were active years ago, and the oil remains in the plants even after they die.
I have no trouble identifying poison ivy, as in this shot of some very classic poison ivy growth. The reason I got a bit of it on me is that a few of the hairy vines on the walnut were active years ago, and the oil remains in the plants even after they die.

On the last day or two, I got a tiny squinch of contact dermatitis on my forearms, probably from long-dead poison ivy vines that clung to high branches that fell from the walnut tree.

Your host poses with a rake by his giant brush pile of branches cut, sawed, and dragged over a three-week period.
Your host poses with a rake by his giant brush pile of branches cut, sawed, and dragged over a three-week period.

As I cleaned, I decided that the thunderstorm must have been in the dissipating stage, since none of the damaged branches were moved anywhere, but just forced straight down to the ground.

I stole this graphic from the interwebs.
I stole this graphic from the interwebs.

In a perfect finale to the clean-up, a friend of mine who does wood turning came by last night and got most of the black walnut logs that sat on the ground after the clean-up was over, giving them a good home.

This whole incident reminds us all that we are always at the mercy of forces much larger that us, like the atmosphere.
This whole incident reminds us all that we are always at the mercy of forces much larger that us, like the atmosphere.