"Nine tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth." Horace Walpole

This seemed like an appropriate pic because of what's going on at our place right now. 

That guy with the sliver car is doing something right.

Some days I have to talk to myself a lot about my attitude, and this is one of them Some of that has to do with how much I didn't get done; when I get to the end of the day my mood is directly related to the number of tasks accomplished, and that's a pretty short list this evening. And part of it has to do with how the little things that make up a day went - well or poorly.

And the down side, I stopped in to see Leroy to learn he hadn't done a thing with my tranny. But he called late this afternoon as promised to tell me the thing is toast, as expected. So he's on the hunt for another T-5 transmission to replace it. That tranny went in a lot of vehicles back in the 80's, but my application requires one from a pre-1988 Chevy S-10 pickup, and those are apparently rare and hard to come by. I've made phone calls and can't find one in Phoenix!
This isn't going to be cheap.

Most of the day was focused on these two, Charlie and Connie Green:

Yesterday was Charlie's 62nd birthday but he sure doesn't act like it. Connie, his wife of 25 years, is pretty amazing herself.
Charlie's wife is more of a man than Pam's husband.
Those two machines pictured in last night's post...Connie drives them. Often that means driving the giant hoe over to a tree, putting the bucket against the tree as high as it will reach, and putting some pressure on the tree while Charlie makes his cuts.
When the tree begins to go he scrambles out of the area and watches it come down with a THUD that literally shakes MoHo from as much as 150' away. (These are some big trees.)

Then Charlie uses a "smaller" chainsaw to limb the tree before moving on to the next one. Repeat for about two dozen trees.
At the end of the day he used the hoe's giant jaws to pile the logs in readiness for the truck that will come tomorrow to begin hauling them to the mill. Charlie figures 3-4 loads.

The largest of those logs is 38" in diameter and represent the largest of the trees, but there's another dozen or so to come down and go out tomorrow.

I took a couple of pictures of the view before all of this began and will wait until they're all down and hauled off before I take the "after" pics. I don't think they will do justice to the change, though, which is dramatic. Gone is the sense of seclusion, privacy.

We'll adjust to the new normal. And if we hadn't done this we'd lay awake at night every time the wind blew knowing we were surrounded by diseased trees that were rotting from the inside out. So, we cling to our description of this as an "unfortunate opportunity" and make the most of what's in front of us. Goats? Fruit trees? More vegetable garden? All of the above? Time will tell.

If you want to see a short video of one of the day's first trees to come down go here.

There's a private road that runs along the south side of our property and is the only way the logging truck can get in to our place to load the logs. It's a single lane road so I contacted the two residences up the road to let them know what would be happening and to find out if/when they'd need to get out. Charlie will have the trucker come when the 15-20 minutes it will take him to load up doesn't interfere with their need to get to work or whatever.

The first guy gave me the morning "departure for work" times for he and his wife and was very calm and cooperative about it. No big deal.
The old woman at the top of the hill, the end of the road...not so much. She and her husband own the road and 25' on either side of the centerline. She objected to our use of the road for any purpose, including the logging truck.
"But when we bought our parcel we got a signed, notarized doc granting us Right of Easement in perpetuity."
"But," she said, "I didn't sign it, so it's not valid. I'll be contacting my lawyer."

I came home and dug out the paperwork, including that doc. I was troubled to see it was signed by the people we bought the lot from, NOT the lady up the road or her brow-beat husband.
Ten minutes later I was on the phone to the Title Company we used.  They were VERY helpful, looked up all the files, and called back to tell me that we bought this parcel in April of '15 from the Jergensen's who signed the doc. BUT, at that point they owned the road! The couple up at the top didn't buy it until July of '15!! And paragraph 5 makes it clear that the right of easement stays with the road if/when it moves from one owner to the next.
Ta-dah!
She obviously doesn't know the order in which all this went down and assumes - probably because we didn't move up here until October - that our Right of Easement predates their purchase of the road.
Should I go up and tell her, and show her the full set of docs including their purchase docs that show I'm A-OK?
Naw. This is not a woman anyone goes looking to have a conversation with if that can be avoided.
Part of me hopes I get a call or letter from a lawyer.