It’s a rainy Sunday. As usual, we planned our day over morning coffee. We decided to spend this one in our country kitchen, listening to Jess Milton and Stuart McLean. In our Farm Kitchen we decided to make and bake a few little things together:
Pumpkin Pie and Oaty Cookies
Laura’s Love Crackers
Multi-grain Oven Bread
Raisin Bread
Mushroom Pate
Thai Basil Pesto
Sweet Pea Hummus
Dukkah Spice
SCOBY candy and fruit leather (a first for us!)
But that’s not what this post is about. It’s about the decision to prune Doug, the Douglas Fir tree that stands proudly in front of our Inglenook Windows. Doug started his life as a potted Christmas Tree and he was just ten feet tall when we met him on the day we moved into our forever home 20 years ago. As you can see, he’s a little bigger now. So big that some of his branches started to reach the neighbour’s power and data line, threatening to shut down his soccer game broadcast during the next snowstorm.
So we needed to prune some of the large branches at the bottom of the high canopy. We could have hired an arborist or spent between $500 and $1,000 on a lift and do it ourselves. We decided to take it one step further.
We simply set about building staging to take us up 20 feet into the canopy of the tree and pruned the branches standing on very firm platforms. While up there, we hung a bird-house for chickadees and pruned the branches over the bat-house. It took four days to build the platforms, one day to do the pruning, and one day to deconstruct the platforms, pull all the nails and store the lumber back in the attic of the workshop. (We keep the lumber handy for when we need to go aloft to re-stain the glulams or re-paint the house.)
But not before we celebrated our decision with “High Tea” on the top platform just below the new canopy bottom. We celebrated our sense of agency. The whole adventure took advantage of six days of sunshine in the middle of winter, was tangible evidence that our regular workouts have really wonderful consequences as they build our strength and balance, and didn’t cost us a nickle.
Questions? Email us: info@kandf.ca