Last year, my neighbor cut down a tree that was pushing my fence over. I did not ask him to do so; he just did.

He called for a brush pick-up from the county two weeks in a row and had much of the tree debris removed. However, he left ten pieces of the trunk and some of the branches in a pile in the corner of his backyard that meets with mine. When people started adding to the pile (I guess they thought that somehow it was the neighborhood dumping ground), I called for another pick-up and dragged all the branches out to the curb myself. I could not, however, pick up the pieces of tree trunk.

Here we are, a year later, and people have begun piling branches on the pile of trunk pieces. Why they do this is a mystery to me when we have free pick-ups from the county, but then again, I have said many times that I just do not understand people. In any case, I really do not like looking at the debris, so after I mowed the front yard weeds and the back yard grass, edged, raked the leaves from one of the backyard flowerbeds (after four bags of leave I decided to leave the other flower beds for later), and trimmed the privet in the back yard, I decided to go inside to call for another brush pick-up from the county. It is scheduled for Tuesday, so I went back outside, pulled on some gloves, and moved the pile of brush debris from the back of his yard to the street. Yes, that included those 10 pieces of trunk.

The tree was originally about 18 inches in diameter. A year ago, I could not have moved those pieces of trunk. But now, after a year of rain, snow, and insects, I could, with much huffing and puffing and two nebulizer treatments, manage to get them to the curb for pick-up.

I also decided to bag up the leaves that had been covering the pile just so that none of my neighbors got any more ideas about dumping their brush there. By the time I finished, I had to sit on the sidewalk for a while before heading inside for my breathing treatment.

I actually hooked up the nebulizer to the outside outlet and spent the two treatment cycles looking at how pretty the back yard is. Kashi joined me and spent the time leaping about trying to catch those bumblebees. I wonder if Kashi or I will be sadder to see the wisteria finish blooming!