How much wood would a woodchuck chuck. . .

It has been raining both rain and firewood around here for the last month. About a month ago I wrote here about the huge limb that fell and knocked the top off another tree. Then a week or so ago I went out one morning to find another huge fallen limb blocking our driveway. It was pretty good sized and had to be sawn into smaller pieces just to get it out of the way. Ray has been chopping and splitting and sawing and making piles of firewood. Here's a pile next to the house.

Here's another pile out by the picnic table.

And another pile.

And there will be more coming.  Here is the brush pile—the branches and broken bits.

Today Ray went out and rented a chipper to dispatch the brush pile. You feed the sticks in one end and wood chips come out the other end. Ray has done this before and the resulting stuff is pretty good for spreading around on paths and between rows in the garden. It might help the muddy area that resulted where the creek overflowed last week.

Of course the images from that gruesome scene in Fargo  (click on that link only if you have strong stomach) always come to mind. Yech! Ray just finished up after a long and noisy day of wood chipping, but he has a nice pile of chips.

Some of the wood that fell just can't be dealt with. The big, rotting branch landed across the creek right next to the bridge. It can't be budged, so it has become what we are optimistically calling "a feature". Ray planted a couple pretty little ferns right in the rotted out portion and it looks pretty good, don't you think?