Physical Labor

I have never shied away from physical labor, probably the result of living on a farm until I was almost 12 and the Puritan work ethic our parents embodied.

Today I continued the chipping of the dead fall our urban forest gifts us with on a regular basis. Mother Nature believes in tidy trees.

My natural inclination is to work nonstop until a job is done. This has resulted in a sore back and feet. On one occasion it caused a neighbor to not ask me again for help.

With the thought in mind that I was a year older, I declared that I was only going to do it for a half hour. My Sweetie said that he would do a half hour later in the day.

56 minutes later he came outside to find that I was still at it. There wasn't a lot left so I decided to continue working with him. Over 30 minutes later we were done. At one point I had to walk around to give my back a rest.

After we had put our tools away and collapsed in a sweaty, sodden heap on the patio, I wondered aloud about when we would be unable to do it.

Suddenly I remembered my mother helping me with the chipping after Richard died. She would have been 80.

So I have quite a few chipping years left.