More Cowbell, Oops, Not Cowbell, I Meant More Tractor and Chainsaw

August 6, 2026

On August 3, while I was finishing up the weeding, I am sure some of you (Tom from Reiko’s Journey) were wondering what Bruce was up to.

Bruce clipped the blackberry thickets to make straight sides. This allowed him to safely mow next to them. He also clipped the blackberries around the fenced shed.

Then, play time. Bruce took the chainsaw, with the newly sharpened chain, to the back pasture to work on Pine Tree 3. He cut off a branch chunk that was preventing the trunk from rolling over. Using the tractor, Bruce was able to roll the trunk over. With the trunk rolled over, he was able to saw the rest of the way through a section of the trunk. He had sawn half way through one foot sections along the trunk. He wanted to see if he could manhandle a larger section to store. It would be cut to size, one foot, when used as filler for the tall garden beds.

What Pine Tree 3 looks like now.

Bruce used the backhoe to dig up more roots from Pine Tree 3. He will smooth the hole later.

The above pictures were taken the next day, August 4.

On August 4, I started the next project, weeding the blueberry circle in the back pasture. The arrow is pointing to the blueberry circle .

On the top left of the picture, you can see the raised garden beds. On the top right of the picture, you can see the mulched fruit trees. The dark green clumps in the middle of the field are blackberry thickets.

The blueberries had a lot of weeds, since I wasn’t able to weed while I was recovering from surgery.

Here are the before pictures.

I spent a couple of hours weeding. I didn’t make the progress I had hoped to make.

I took some pictures of a Variegated Fritillary before heading inside.

Later in the morning, Bruce took the tractor to clean up the pile of bark from Pine Tree 2.

I spent some time in the afternoon working on a drawing of Dorrie.

Around 7:00 PM, we started to head to the vegetable gardens and then to the back pasture. As I was putting on my shoes, Bruce noticed this critter casually strolling through the backyard.

We decided to wait until the skunk had walked across the yard and into our next door neighbor’s woods.

The bark pile from Pine Tree 2 is gone.

The clouds overhead had a tinge of orange.

Heading towards the house, it started to rain, so we dashed inside. We didn’t get a lot of rain. While I hoped for a pretty sunset, the clouds blocked the view of the sunset.