Having a day off from work (and a fresh clean colon!) means I get a lot of stuff done. Not always. Maybe just today. But it felt great to be out in the air and sun all afternoon. Sweating, working, breathing. Aaahh.
The things I accomplished today:
3,748 dandelions expunged from the lawn.
First lawn mowing of the year.
Trimming of plant life (where needed now that leaves are out).
Clean up of brush pile in driveway.
Partial removal of "cute" brick oval in yard.
Removal of scraggly tree.

The tree removal process was quite good, almost MacGyver-ish. And I got to put some of my Boy Scouts skills to work. The reason the tree had to be removed was that it was very scraggly and growing at a 65-degree angle towards my neighbor's yard to avoid the deep shadows of the giant maple tree in my lawn. Armed only with a small cross-cut saw and some rope, I was able to remove the 7" diameter tree all by myself. I needed the rope to provide directional tension so as to avoid knocking my neighbor's power line out of her house. Not a desired outcome. I climbed up a carefully balanced ladder and affixed the rope and then ran it over to a very solidly installed post on the chain link fence on the opposite side of my property. Using the post as a crude pulley type of device I was able to pull the tree away from the power line. I cut a big notch in the side of the trunk and then re-pulled and re-tied the line. More cutting of the notch. Re-tension and re-tie. More cutting. Much more pulling. Finally got the trunk to break towards my lawn and with a final push from me the trunk broke free and the tall tree landed right where I wanted it to. Everybody sing!