The Trimming Life

We’re all only fragile threads, but what a tapestry we make – Jerry Ellis

Ah, the joys of retirement.

I held my a trusty tape measure against a piece of wood, made a magical mark, measured a second time (as any wood-working professional would), confirmed the measurement was true and accurate, then proceeded to cut the door trim with my miter saw at an angle set for the proper number of degrees. When finished, I carried and tested the finished product against the door frame and – voila! It was too short. It seems I mitered the board in the wrong direction from my mark. Uff-da!

It’s ironic being a man who worked some thirty three years for a Jewish Carpenter from Nazareth (the carpenter – not me) and finding myself with all that experience still being able to make that sort of mistake. What a life! The double irony is that I don’t recall ever cutting a sermon too short!

But life moves on. One can’t stop trying just because things don’t work out as planned the first time and, to be honest, I know my skills with wood and saws well enough to confess I actually figured something like that would happen, so I made sure I had extra wood on hand!

Hah! Take that, o ye Fates!!!

I don’t mind admitting failure. Oh sure, there was a time I would have swept the sawdust under the rug and denied ever making an error like that, but that was so long ago the Allosauruses who might have tattled on me have gone the way of all the rest of the dinosaurs. And besides, it’s possible I’ve grown wiser. What’s the fun in hiding the funny things we mortals do, anyway?

I’m sure it isn’t funny to the tree that gave it’s all so I could trim the doorway in our home, but I managed to put the scrap lumber to use for smaller trim pieces that were also needed, so all was not lost. I have come to realize that life is too short to sweat the petty stuff. As someone once said, “Those who’ve never made a mistake have never done anything.”

The fact is there was nothing wrong with the door trim or baseboards in our house – or the spare bedrooms, to be more precise – but they don’t match the rest of the trim in the house which was updated prior to our buying it. We thought it would be nice to finish the update. Note: I use the term “we” quite loosely, but let’s not quibble over details. The fact is that left to my own devices, I would prefer to lean on my Lazy Gene (but misplaced it during the move).

So anyway, there’s work to do, although it is work of a different sort. I now have the time to practice doing things I’ve not done much of, and that is a nice change of pace, although the pace is quite glacial and needs to be timed with a calendar rather than a stop watch (and I slow down even more if anyone stops to watch me – I’m not fond of having an audience when playing with sharp objects like saws and drills, nails and hammers, and the like).

One of the pleasant things about doing my own honey-do woodwork is I can admire the greater skills of genuine carpenters. The good news is it was professionals who did the public spaces in our home, and the areas upon which I have been toiling away are and will be hidden away from the rest of the world (except maybe horror house movie makers – here’s a shout out to Hollywood).

That’s as it should be. While I know I shall improve over time (gaining experience along the way), I also know I will never be perfect. That job, thankfully, belongs to God.

In the meantime, I continued to measure multiple times and by the time I got to the last bit of trim, I had gotten the angle on doing miters a mite better and faster. And where my splices are sloppy, I have discovered the joy of wood putty (but I’ll save that story for another time).

Until then, enjoy your summer. May you never be board (sic) here in this, God’s valley. I know I won’t be!

When the Bough Breaks

People are what they believe – Anton Chekhov

I was outside watering my tomatoes when I heard what I was sure was a rabid grizzly bear beating the bushes in my neighbor’s yard. It’s hard to describe a sound, but suffice it to say that if you have seen any wild grizzly movies on the silver screen (Night of the Grizzly and The Edge come immediately to mind) you will know the ominous sound of a beast single-mindedly wanting to have you for breakfast – or dinner.

Well, that was the sound I heard over in the corner of the yard as I was tending to my veggies (which are doing very nicely, I should add). I looked up from my hydrating duties to see what was causing such a crunchy commotion just in time to see a mighty bough break off from the neighbor’s fir tree and come crashing down onto the fence separating our two properties.

The good news is that the bough was crib-less, so no “rock-a-bye” babies fell as the incident unfolded. Also, while it had been my intention to water plants and bushes where the tree limb fell, I hadn’t gotten that far, so this baby did not have his noggin cracked by the aforementioned falling bough.

After confirming that I was still in one piece and whole in both life and limb (and heart continued beating within my own trunk – although it wasn’t beating about the bush), I went and got my wife to tell her what had happened (after all, she is the branch manager of our home) and the two of us trundled over to our neighbors to let them know about the damage to the fence we shared.

I thought the tree belonged to him, but as it turns out, it belongs to yet another neighbor who, while friendly enough, declined any responsibility. “The tree is on my side of the fence,” he said, “but it was planted by someone else and is actually on the property line, so it’s not mine.”

Ah, who says good fences (or walls) make for good neighbors? Some knot-head, no doubt.

Anyway, it didn’t matter to me who the tree belonged to and, the fact is, the damage to the fence was minimal. My neighbor and I took a couple of saws and loppers to the offending yard waste and laid waste to the trespassing vegetation. We chopped and lopped everything down to size in about an hour, and then loaded everything into my pickup, hauled it to the landfill and dumped it. A few days later we replaced the broken stringer and reinstalled the fence boards and, voila, all was made whole once again.

I do worry the tree will continue to shed limbs, for it does not appear to be a healthy tree. It has a number of dead branches holding on for no good reason except to keep the world in suspense. There hadn’t been any wind the day that one big bough broke, but I give gravity credit for its fall. It had no choice; it was the Law (of gravity).

I won’t lose any sleep over the matter. No one was injured. The incident gave me a chance to get to know my next-door neighbor a lot better as we worked together. I got to at least meet another neighbor I had not known at all, and I suspect I will get to know him and his wife better as the law of gravity continues to be rigorously enforced in our neighborhood. He may deal with his tree; he may not. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The tree is sick, to be sure, but it is also short enough it is highly unlikely it will convert our home into a tree-house any time soon.

I will admit that fences help delineate property lines, but I wonder if they truly do promote neighborliness. It took a broken fence to discover who my true neighbor is.

A fence may give the illusion of security, but I dare say it’s only an illusion. Not only did a mindless fir crush it, but squirrels cross it all the time as they plunder Nature’s Market for their daily bread!

I’m glad God broke the fence. I’m especially glad it was God and not a grizzly here in this, God’s valley.