Felling the tree, at last.....

 7:38 am - Friday - March 20th - TWW - 51° F, humidity 10%, cloud cover ZERO %, wind 4 mph out of the east by southeast....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 89° F.  The view this morning....

....and on this date in 2017 TLE and I were in Death Valley.....

.....at the Furnace Creek Inn...it was a very warm, and windy March in Death Valley that year.

TLE had amassed another burn pile over the past couple of weeks on the south side of our EcoWorthy Dual Axis solar tracker, and Thursday morning promised to be almost windless, so while she lit the fire, and began tending to her burn pile I started up the Ford 420 diesel tractor to create another burn pile.  Last winter we had cut a lot of branches off juniper trees just to the south of the current burn pile and drug them out of the area we've been clearing for over a year now.  Later we added some rotten wood to the pile that was next to the garage, but never burned any of it, because the pile was too close to several juniper trees.  In order to burn that stuff I needed to move it with the tractor out to a clearing even more south of its current location....

....it used to be in the foreground of the picture above, but is now moved to an area where it can be burned, maybe next week.  It took less than 15 minutes, and then I was onto the next project....cut down that tree on which we have been whittling since last winter until there was just this 5' tree trunk left.....

.....I've been wanting to finish the job for several weeks now, but there was always something more important to do, however, Thursday the wait was over.  I wanted to cut if off as close to the ground as possible, which is a fine notion, but way harder to do than you might think. It took me the better part of an hour, but in the end I was successful....

The tree has been felled

At its base the trunk was about 18" thick

....next I'll bore some holes in the stump, pour in some diesel, and see if I can burn it down to ground level.

TLE's burn pile took the better part of the day to burn down as we kept adding more branches to it including branches I trimmed from the tree next to Phyllis'  Newell so we can extend the patio awning in the near future....

I'm hoping I've trimmed enough now to open the patio awning....we shall see

....but it did eventually burn down.  By early evening it was time to douse what was left with water, and call it good.

Thursday was also the beginning of the round of 64 in this year's edition of March Madness.  By Friday evening there will be just 32 teams left in this single elimination tournament.  As always there were several upsets, and I expect there will be more by Friday evening.  We watched games until after 9 pm before calling it another day at TWW.

Thanks for stopping by!