Earworm for the missing one. I wonder how Raven is doing.
Thanks for the earworm, and also for thinking of me.
I'm sorry to hear about Raven's troubles. Tell her we said we are thinking about her, and I sent her (((hugs))).
And a big (((HUG))) and thank you to you as well, JJ!
Every little bit helps.
That will cost a good penny. I've had to cut down some dead trees too. It's still better than leaving them there for fire and storm hazard. Nature will rebound. It always finds a way, whether we worry about it or not. And nature works on a timescale we don't always comprehend. In a couple years, there will be new seedlings. She will get to watch new life ascend.
She will have her son nearby. Is that not good news?
I stand to make a good deal of money off of it because my forest is old growth. That is one of the reasons that I am grieving so deeply over these trees. Some of them are hundreds of years old. And yes, the forest will rebound with hundreds of seedlings competing for the newly available sunshine. But - that is the problem. An old growth forest has very little undergrowth because of the thick canopy, so you can see quite a distance. The cut areas will now be impenetrable thickets. It will never look or be the same in my lifetime. So - I am grieving for the death of the trees, but also for my own personal loss.
This is a view from my kitchen window in very early autumn. It's almost entirely poplar which is the species that has been most attacked by the aphid blight. The trees look thin, but they are actually quite large and very tall. There is no sense of scale, so you can only imagine. The forest floor on this ridge has almost no undergrowth because the sun can't reach.
This is the same view later in autumn when it absolutely glows with golden light:
And below is the same ridge during the day yesterday. There's not much going on for the first half of the video other than sawing and the pounding in of wedges to control the trajectory of the tree's fall. I won't be offended if ya skip ahead.
Poplar Felled on the Ridge - YouTube
I will never see the first two views from my kitchen and dining room windows again. So ... I'm mourning. And not feeling sociable. Not that I ever really do.
Please forgive me for my withdrawal. I've got to process this in my own way. Even the BF knows enough to give me my space right now. He's doing much better by the way. Just getting used to having a pacemaker and feeling a bit beat up. His heart stopped completely eight times and he had to be shocked back to life repeatedly each of those times. He's lucky to have survived. That's a bit of a wake up call. But, it wasn't a heart attack and there was no permanent damage. There weren't clogged arteries or anything like that. The bottom half of his heart was simply not getting an electrical signal to beat. Now - it has no choice!
Anyhow - thanks all, for thinking of me. And thank you, Terry - for being such a patient and understanding friend.
She is lucky to have that neighbor. My neighbor charged me $120 to use his chainsaw, so he can "sharpen" it afterwards! I could have bought one, but paid him instead to maintain neighborly love.
The neighbor has been such a gift. He loves this forest almost as much as I because he grew up playing in these woods. He is using his considerable skills to deftly land these giants with minimal damage to the neighboring trees. I watched him take out a monster yesterday that was well over a hundred feet tall.
One branch on a neighboring tree was injured. The man is a master and knows just what he's doing.
He has also arranged for a friend to come and chop up the detritus from the tops of the trees for firewood which will be hauled away. It looks like a war zone now, but not for long.
. I had an antique lamp on my screened-in porch. "Had" being the operative word 
One of my mutts knocked it off the table and broke the decorative glass 'sphere' that was in the middle of it. I have searched high and low for a replacement but can't find one (or refuse to pay what they are asking for it). Sooooo, I had this bright idea of making it myself. I bought a glass piece that I think will work great. I just need to drill a hole through the bottom of it. Should be simple enough, right??? 
. I had an antique lamp on my screened-in porch. "Had" being the operative word 
