We have very welcome cooler weather this morning! My thermometer is registering 65 degrees - it was more like 95 yesterday. Actually, I don't know how hot it got, I just turned on the overhead fans and stayed as quiet as possible. Mostly I worked on my computer, on the West Danville history. I expect you're thinking, "How much longer is that book going to take?" And I often think that, too. The thing is, we have collected so much information, it's actually making it difficult to put together something that will be interesting reading, hopefully without being painfully dull with too many dates, facts and background information. We don't want to leave out something important - and deciding what is important is really hard. What's important to one person probably going to be to someone else; but we want there to be something for everyone in there - including lots and lots of photos. So, that's what I, and the others on the committee, are up to these days - and we are moving ahead, if slowly.
      I have some photos to share this morning. First, some background! Jamie and Marie had a really tall dead spruce tree leaning towards their house, so they decided before it got blown down and crashed onto the house and did lots of damage, they would have it taken down. Jamie does that sort of stuff all the time and would normally take it down himself, but this one was leaning precariously towards the house and he didn't want to risk getting into trouble. So they called Calvin Alexander, who is a professional and owns Alexander Tree Service in Cabot. 
     Fred and I heard the chainsawing Wednesday evening, so we walked up to Jamie and Marie's to watch. We got there after Calvin had limbed the tree all the way up, and just in time to see him take it down in sections - laying each one precisely on the hillside below the house, with not even a chip falling out of place.  It was great fun to see that process.
     And speaking of chips, Calvin told me he always has chips to get rid of. He brought a load for Jamie and Marie, and I'm going to have a little of theirs for my flower beds. A whole load would be way too much for me to use up - but I can certainly use a couple of wheelbarrow loads!
     We have been worried about some trees near our power line, too, but I've thought it was too bad to put big, healthy trees into chips, so hesitated to call Calvin. However, we don't really have enough to make it worthwhile for a logger to come in and do it, so we may need to just let it be chips.
     I think the photos speak for themselves - it was a big tree, and everything came down where it was supposed to. In the last picture, that's Calvin sitting on the grass after the chain had slipped off the bar of his saw. Anyone who has used a chainsaw knows what a hassle that can be. It meant he had to come down from the tree, fix the chain and then climb all the way back up. But that's part of the deal, I guess.
     We watched from Jamie's new deck - one story up from the driveway. He was just finishing putting the stair railing together  and you can see the temporary clamps holding it in place. The deck was a great vantage point to watch the tree being taken down.
     And now, back to the History of West Danville!