Well, today was supposed to be tax day with some vine cutting and tree felling as brakes in between tax sessions, but it turned out to be half of a morning of tax work, and all the rest of the day out in the woods trying to clear out the vines in the brush in the dead trees and whatnot.
Oops. 🙃
Looks like I’m going to be up late doing taxes tonight, which will put me on the short end of sleep for a long work day tomorrow.
Oops, again. 🙃
The once you start a fire, especially when it’s down away from where I can get a hose to it, you just have to stay with it until it’s out.
I’ve likely gotten myself poison ivy times 20 in the effort because smart little me didn’t put on pants or long sleeve shirt, and just kept going and going and going for hours. Only takes 10 or 15 minutes for the poison ivy oils to bond to your skin permanently and cause the reaction. So, I’m pretty well hosed, I think. Hopefully, it’s not so bad that I’m out of commission with poison ivy all over my face and whatnot, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens as well.
I can feel my face itching already. 🙃
The other concern is the burning of the poison ivy vines and breathing in poison ivy smoke. That can actually be fatal, if you’re badly allergic enough to the poison ivy oils. I tried to steer clear of the smoke, but there are plenty of times where the wind blew it right back at me, so cross your fingers. It is a little hard to breathe, but that’s also normal for me for breathing and smoke, so it’s not necessarily poison ivy issues. I’m going to guess that I’m going to be fine, but I guess we’ll cross our fingers and see.
The lungs part, anyway. The rest of it, I think I’m pretty well hosed. Well, I pretty well hosed myself.
There are so many vines, and the majority of them aren’t poison ivy, but there’s a lot of poison ivy as well, so when you’re pulling vines out of trees, you don’t always know which vines that are coming down are the poison ivy ones in which aren’t. They don’t have the nice little three leaves like they do when they are plants on the ground. I mean, yes they do, but right now they haven’t leaked out yet, so they’re all just branches without leaves, and once they’re high enough up and branch out like a tree, they look pretty much like anything else. When they’re still attached to the tree, they’re super easy to identify.
They’re still plenty more to burn, and an absolutely massive amount to do to Divine and thin out and fell all the dead trees, but I’ve gotten probably the thickest of the Vine issues cut out. What used to be one huge thicket of vines is now open ground between all the trees, and the leaves that are coming out on the trees are all from the trees themselves and not the vines. At least, in this section that’s the case. You can almost feel the trees breathing a sigh of relief as they don’t have to compete with the vines and aren’t getting choked out by them.
It definitely looks a lot better here. 😊
I’ve been enjoying listening to musica latina, trying to help myself improve my Spanish. I don’t use it much at all, so I’ve lost quite a bit. It takes a lot longer to get going than I would like it to, and since my vocabulary was based mostly on Mormon topics, I didn’t learn a lot of the other topics, but I’m exposing myself to the news in Spanish and the Spanish music. And that’s been good.
It’s 8:22, and I’m just sitting here as the last of the light begins to disappear as we head into the dark of night. I’m watching the fire, both making sure that it doesn’t start a forest fire, and also just to watch it.
I’ve already showered in the hopes of washing off all of the poison ivy oils that I almost certainly got all over me, but I’m back down here, this time without gloves trying to do everything with a stick, so I don’t touch stuff. But, that’s probably a lost cause. 🙃
I’ll end up taking another shower before I dive into midnight tax work. Cross your fingers for me that I’m able to get it done pretty quickly. 🤞
Oh! I just saw the first Firefly of the season! 🥰
Yay!
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 