We started Monday by felling a tree. There was a dead four- or five-inch diameter beech at the edge of the garden that Arlene was concerned with. Matt and I first decided which way we wanted it to fall. I hacked at it for a while with a hatchet, making a big V on the side to which we wanted it to go. Matt went to the car, got a rope, shinnied up the tree, and tied the rope around it eight or ten feet up. He went over to where we wanted it to go and started pulling. The tree very cooperatively fell, but got caught in another tree — I guess even where we wanted it to go there wasn’t really enough room for it. Matt pulled it off the other; we lifted and tugged and got the end, which had dug itself a foot into the ground, up; and we had a good fallen tree. We looked at it and thought, we really could use a chainsaw to cut this up.
It was hot enough for swimming. Anne and Matt had bought a big inflatable raft, a Coleman Party Dock. Matt inflated it with the shop-vac and went off mountain biking. Arlene started walking down to the beach. Anne and I thought we’d paddle the raft down to the beach using canoe paddles. Well! The thing is not easy to paddle. It took a lot of effort to keep it going the least bit straight. By the time we were a third of the way to the beach we realized that we were doing it the hard way. We called out to some people sitting on their dock to ask if we might land there, and they said sure. Their two blond Labradors were very interested, but refrained from jumping on the raft. We landed safely and carried the thing the rest of the way.
Even on the third of July the water wasn’t the least bit too warm. I did get my courage up to get all wet and to swim out to the float. Maybe I’ll start to become a better open-water swimmer if I at least do that a few times.
I had started knitting a hat, just a ribbed watch cap, 80 stitches on 10.5 needles, with the blue handpainted bulky yarn I got at the Denmark Sheepfest, that morning. I was working on it at the beach. It started a long conversation about sewing machines with a woman whom we had met at the beach a few weeks ago.
After swimming, and after Matt got home and washed lots of mountain biking mud off himself and his bike, we drove to Windham to do some serious shopping. Matt felt strongly that we needed ladders around the place so we would be able to do routine maintenance on gutters and so on. He and I went to Lowe’s while Arlene and Anne shopped at Big Lots across the street. We ended up with a 20-foot extension ladder, an 8-foot stepladder, both nice lightweight, non-conductive fiberglass, and a 14-inch Poulan chainsaw. That’s the smallest, lightest chainsaw they had. I figure, I’m a small guy, and I’d rather have a wimpy chainsaw that I can control than one that’s too heavy for me to handle. This one is marked “for occasional use only” which I guess means don’t expect to run it for hours on end. I think it’ll be adequate for my needs.