What the heck was that?? Part 1

I know, I know, where the heck have I been?

I've been sweating my *ss off in the blistering Texas heat. Long ago, when I first started this running account of my insane attempt at making over our backyard, I posted a really bad (before I knew what I was doing) panoramic shot of my back yard, with virtually invisable green arrows pointing out what I planned on doing in my yard.

Mr. Peabody: Let's take a quick trip in the wayback machine, shall we Sherman?

Sherman: We don't need the wayback machine, Mr. Peabody, we can just look at the photos.

Mr. Peabody: Shut up, you!

So here it is...



Attractive, huh?

You can see the old white and green shed, but more so, you can see the old clothesline attached to it.  The other end is attached to our retired neighbor. He likes to help. He swears he doesn't mind standing there all day long.

Anyway...

Since we are of the tightwad sect, we choose to air our laundry as much as possible. Wait! that's DRY, dry our laundry as much as possible. We could use our energy star rated dryer (well la de da!) of course but staying with our tight-waddiness (okay, we're trying to decrease our carbon footprint), we choose not to use it as much as possible.

Finally, our retired neighbor got tired of standing all day (liar!), so I had to come up with something better.

The process was supposed to go like this: root cellar, move the shed, then build the clothesline. Well. the root cellar ate my lunch. I filled in that hole, moved the shed, remember that?



Believe me, I do. I have the scars to prove it.

So, now I had to put up the clothesline or I would suffer a beating from my Significant Other.  While  figuring out where to place it, the universe intervened.

Here's our backyard from a slightly different angle.



Notice, if you will, a beautiful shade tree right behind the shed in our neighbors yard.

A truly magnificent creature. We thought, well, since it does cast a huge shadow for about half the day into our yard, we will have to position the clothesline a bit further away from the fence. No big deal.

 While the idea and concept of the clothesline danced in my head one night, a massive thunder and lightening storm rolled through. I briefly wrote about it here...

"May 19th, 2010
However, I didn't have to wait long. That night a massive storm rolled in around 1:30 am. It arrived with what I would like to call an artillery shell right in our backyard. The clap of thunder was so loud, not only did it wake us out of dead sleep but it shook the whole house. It was one of those storms. The kind where I keep one ear open to gauge the sound of the wind. There is that certain sound the wind takes on when it goes from, "oh, this is a fun intense storm", to "holy crap! Run for shelter!". It got close a few times."

Well, we didn't know how close it really got until a few days later. While out in the yard we were looking over at that part of the fence and our neighbors beautiful tree looked...odd. It was hanging awfully low...



Yeah, I know. This tree is like 25 feet from our bedroom. LOL Oh and that black stuff? That's where it was burnt. That artillery shell I wrote about above, was indeed a lightening strike. It just about split the tree in half.
I was really sad. I loved that tree.

The neighbor is a really nice young lady. She was at a loss as to what to do, so being the good neighbors we are, we cut down the damaged limbs and sealed the cut areas.

It's a strong tree, I think it will survive. I hope so. We took the wood as "payment'. :)

Out of bad came some good. That particular missing area of the tree opened up the sky for our clothesline. Go figure?

I have prattled on enough for today.

Tomorrow: Part 2 the clothesline of death. (It just sounds better).

Remember: Green is Good!