Mar 11 - is it Christmas ?

It must be.  We were trimming the trees ... but that came later.

We rode south again, same old, same old; windy and hot.  We got back around 4pm; cleaned up and sat outside for a while.  It's a wonderful time of year, temperature wise, and with the wind, there are no no-see-ums.

I'm not sure what possessed me, but I then started trimming the loquats.  They are dropping onto the lawn and Abby is eating them; pits in her poop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loquat

The tree is on Chet's property and we put up a little one-foot high fence at this time of year to create a boundary for Abby, but a few still fall on our side.  With the pole trimmer, I reached as high as I could and trimmed the fruit.  Then, with Jerry's help, I stood on the stepladder and trimmed even higher.  We filled our two yard garbage cans with the stuff.

Chet came out and did some yard work and suggested that we trim the bushy and too-tall tree that we'd been commenting on together the prior day.  Ok, why not.  That tree required shaping -- it's kind of an evergreen, like a cedar but not a cedar.  It's developed around ten 3" stalks inside, so it's not as if it's simply one trunk to cut, if we wanted to shorten the tree.

For this task we used his electric pole saw.  Somehow I did most of the cutting, with Chet and Jerry guiding and then helping support me on the stepladder, you know, on that last step-that-is-not-a-step. I managed to shorten the tree by about 3 feet, getting it now down to the height of our gutters. 

I need to take pictures.

We basically stopped as it got dark, but that was all we were going to do anyway.  We packed up the tools and gathered up the clippings, stuffing those garbage cans even more. 

Today we're riding south again, but this time it will be 200k.  The plan is to leave around 6:45 to get to the convenience store for a receipt as it opens at 7am.

Onward ...