Thursday’s Thoughts ~ Looking For A Silver Lining…

I’m trying to smile and be positive, but lately, it’s becoming very hard!  I can’t help but feel as if a perpetual cloud has been hanging over our ‘neck of the woods’–literally and figuratively speaking!

Like so many others around us, we’ve been receiving daily rain showers for well over a month now.  To say our ground is thoroughly saturated would be an understatement!  To say we are living in a swamp would accurately describe our current living conditions.  The ground is so wet it has begun to smell like a swamp, and the mosquitoes are so thick outside, it feels like a swamp, too.  Insect repellent has become my new perfume!

Yesterday was a difficult day for our tree trimmers.  As they continued their work at the far end of our house, they discovered the land is much wetter there than they first realized.  Getting daily showers of rain hasn’t helped either!

The workers have taken down all but one tree (out of 47), but have discovered there is just no way to remove the debris right now!  The ground is simply too wet, and the tree sections are too heavy with sap.  The workers were stuck, literally and figuratively, as you’ll discover when you read on…

Among yesterday’s many mishaps with the tree trimmers, was a broken water line and a severed cable to our Dish Network satellite!  To say it was a bad day for all of us would be another understatement!  Both incidents happened while the men were attempting to grind a multitude of stumps on the front side of our house.  Fortunately, within a few hours, both lines had been repaired, but there was one final mishap at the end of the day!

At my request, the men had ventured up near the chicken pen to remove a large pile of limbs and debris near our daughter’s yard, before calling it a day.  While in that area, they decided to grind a few of the stumps near the chicken pen.  Within just a few minutes, the Bobcat and stump grinder bogged down!  It took the men well-over an hour to get the machine out, and by the end of the day, we all had a headache!

We’re expecting more rain today.  Two sides of our yard are covered with huge hunks of many trees, as well as the tree tops and limbs.  The massive stumps and sections of tree trunks are weeping tar profusely.  The other two sides of our yard are covered with dirt, sand, and sawdust, which will quickly become mud, as soon as the next shower of rain comes.  I can’t help but sigh when I think of how hard Ed and I worked on growing our lawn, which is practically non-existent now…

We’re not sure when the weather is going to dry off enough for the workers to get back in and finish the cleanup, so we’re playing a ‘waiting game’ with the rain.  The workers can’t collect all of their pay until the job is finished, and our lives can’t get back to normal until they finish the job.  I think I can safely say, everyone is looking for a silver lining in the cloud that continues to hang over our ‘neck of the woods’.