squash!!!!!
First Serious Tree Work
Yesterday and today I started my first serious attack on the trees reaching close to and over our house. I started with the North side where the trees are reasonably young still they are very high. In the first round I cleaned out the lower branches hanging over our parking spot. I used the ladder and cut the branches while standing on the ladder. The work was relatively straight forward. I left reasonably long remainders of the branches, as I was planning on using them as steps to later climb higher into the trees.
In the next two steps I left the ladder and mounted into the tree always staying on the trunk and carefully moving upward. While mounting upwards I removed the big branches towards out house and finally I reached the point where I could just take off the top of the tree without risking the remainders to fall on our house. It is almost 10m high and I worked carefully keeping my legs and at least one arm to secure myself. The cutting in all cases went very smoothly and as a result now all of the trees branches reaching towards our house are gone. It adds a lot of light to the kitchen, Gisele’s room and the attic, but most important of all it gives the roof some sun and no more easy access for squirrels or ants.
And I also took some breaks…. watching Germany win against Australia (4:0) in the World Cup and having some quality bonding time with Blaki.
Achilles Tednon mostly Recovered: Squash
Yesterday I went on the court for the first time in about 6 weeks. It was wonderful. I had about 40 minutes by myself hitting the ball and then played with Jon (the guy with the fruit basket story). I made sure I did not push myself too hard nevertheless it was a 3:0 and another 1:0. Mike Z. showed up when we finished and we had a short chat. I will probably soon play with him.
I still need to take it easy but it looks like that I should be back in a few weeks at 95%.
Moving our Tree from the Front Yard
After very positive results from moving lots of bushes and other plants in the garden I was confident enough that I could move our last tree in the front yard to a the property line behind our shed to create a bit more privacy for our sun room. Ana was of course all excited about this idea.
I started maybe half an hour before the Laker vs. Celtics game which started at 20:00 (this was game two, the Celtics down by 1:0 in the NBA finals). First I stitch out one spade (a special long and narrow one for digging tranches) deep around the tree cutting all the roots in a maybe 0.5-0.75m radius around the about 2.50m high tree. The roots I cut were not particularly big. That went pretty well, but of course the tree did not move a bit when I tried to take it out. Then I dug a 2 spade deep trench around the tree lining up with my previous stitches. By now I was able to get a bit under the tree’s roots and when I finished all around the tree started to move slightly. I thought there must be still some big roots keeping it down below and I asked Guillelmo (who arrived yesterday for a 12 days visit) to help me bend the tree together with its roots in all direction and cut off everything below. I was at that point completely wet from the digging.
We were able to bend the tree over to each side and I found no more roots connecting the tree and we realized that it must be the weight of the dirt sticking to the roots, which made it so difficult to move the tree. We were barely able to get the tree out of the whole after I shook off as much dirt from the roots without destroying more roots. After some major force was applied we were finally able to load the tree onto the wheelbarrow and pushed it with a lot of effort up the slope behind our shed were it fit perfectly into the hole I prepared. Meanwhile, it had gotten dark and I was glad to sit on the sofa after a massive shower. I had gotten so dirty the big hole will be closed tomorrow. Photos will follow soon, stay tuned.
Then and Now — A Comparison
When we bought our house we saved the three most important pictures and to document the differences I went out in the garden today and reproduced then with our little camera. Of course they do not show exactly the same frame but it is pretty close and you can see what has changed since the last year. Take a look!
Missing Squash
Since about 4 weeks I have not been able to play any squash because of a modest injury to my Achilles tendon. It is getting better but it is not yet gone. I will play on Monday if all goes well. Let’s see how Monday is going to go.
Cigars and beer?
for the ones who did not yet try it. Cigars and beer does not work very well, even if it is a good German beer.
Saturday is Soccer Day
Since the beginning of April I have been going to the Dallin School with Ivan where all U6 Arlington boys play in the Soccer Clinic. Today the entire family went and Ana and myself brought the ‘sillas de capitan’ (camping chairs) which we bought maybe ten years ago when we were still living in Chicago. They were Ana’s idea and have gone with us on every camping trip and on many excursions since.
The clinic consists of a master coach (Dinelli) and a helper coach who will spent the first 40 minutes to let the kids play with the ball, performing a number of cool games, most of them involving the kids running around with the ball and someone chasing them. The kids enjoy this and they have their regular water breaks and the round of instructions. In the last part of the hour the teams play against each other by splitting each team in two and play two separate games with the teams playing next to them. On the Dallin field there are about ten teams in total nicely separated by their shirt color. Ivan plays in the royal blue team. Eric — a good friend of Ivan — plays in the orange team and Cal — another good friend of Ivan — plays in the green-blue team. I am not sure what the color is officially called, they must have a more snappy description of the color.
Ivan enjoys his soccer, fully dressed up with cleats, shin guards, long blue socks and his royal blue Arlington soccer shirt. He just loves to play around with other kids and he has some reasonable skills. If no one encourages and instructs him he would just run around on the field without paying too much attention to the ball. Once I remind him to look out for the ball and try to kick it he even makes some nice plays. He always scores one or two goals and he is a good team player. These games are not competitive and nobody keeps the score except sometimes the boys secretly wisper the score to each other 🙂 Boys will always be boys I guess.
‘Seta y Pete’ are gone
While most people think video games have only negative effects I wanted to share an experience with Markus these last two weeks. Markus went to the dentist for the first time in his life and behaved very well, as Ana reported. The dentist was very happy with the state of his mouth, teeth, gum and all, and showed Markus his x-ray. He showed him that his new teeth are already coming. When the dentist saw that he was still using a pacifier — pete as we call it — he was alarmed and told Markus that he was already very big and needed to kick the bad habit. Ana was delighted and of course supported the suggestion full heartily. Markus was equally convinced that he was a big boy but the ‘pete’ still had a large attraction. So, Ana promised him Wii-Lego-Batman if he could stop using a pete for at least one week. Since that day Markus has slept without a pacifier and without his beloved top from Mummy — seta, short for camiseta.
Today after almost two weeks I went together with him and we bought the video game together, which was a very happy event for him. He also enjoyed playing the game with his brother.