The arborist

Friday night I took the train down to central Jersey. We had dinner with PJ and ST. St made an awesome stir fry for us.

Saturday morning we got up early and did our long run. I ran eight miles, the husband ran ten. We ran along the canal in the neighborhood and it was perfect running weather. I ran my eight miles i just over sixty four minutes which was a great pace.

We got back to the cottage to meet the arborist. Why an arborist? Well ST had mentioned one of our trees looked sick. So the husband set up a meeting. It was quite interesting. We have two pin oaks and a willow oak on the drive way. The two pin oaks are the ones that have the problem. They have some bacterial infection. The arborist then went through the property. We have a weeping bitter cherry tree, a tulip tree, a silver maple, some white ash trees (which led him to warn us about the emerald ash borer), a kusa dogwood, a dogwood, several hickory trees and the one that got the arborist all agog was the sour wood.

The three oaks on the driveway are all about sixty plus years old. He then pointed out to us the oldest tree on the property- a massive pin oak he said was at least one hundred twenty years old.

Then we got to work putting up dry wall. We had a beam replaced in the dining/living room area. That meant we had to replace part of the ceiling and three walls. We got one and a half walls done and half the ceiling. We glued and screwed the dry wall on. Thankfully we did not have any mistakes. The hardest part was getting the ceiling up. We used two tees we made out of two by fours. It was quite a bit of work.

We went out to dinner with PJ and ST. The restaurant was great. I was exhausted by the end of dinner however and could not wait to get back to the house and go to sleep.

Sunday we finished all the dry wall. I forgot how tiring manual labor is. I was exhausted from two days of physical labor.

I did not run this morning as I would rather sleep in after all the work. I can do my short run tomorrow morning.

Headphones was on the bus this morning. I had not seen him in a while and forgot how hot he was.

No dojo- sweep the leg!- tonight. I got home, walked and fed the kids when the thunder storm started. Not only did I not feel like walking in the rain but the kids get scared with thunder storms so I decided a nap was the better part of valor.

Today was painful at work. It is really the dog days of summer. We were short two people due to vacation and it was still dead quiet. I should be careful what I wish for but I hope it picks up a bit this week.