Venis Saskasus

We are the proud owners of an out of control Mountain Ash tree.   Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of the tree before we cut it back, but before the trimming the overhead wire in this photo was completely obscured by the tree and the branches were almost brushing the ground. At first, the kids were upset that we were cutting all their climbing branches, but I think we left more than enough for them to continue testing their resilience to sudden impacts with the ground.

With some of the debris, we built the kids a lean-to.  This kept them happily dragging branches across the yard to their construction project (unwittingly saving Mom and Dad the chore of cleaning up themselves). Once they had 'renovated' their new 'home' everything was fine.

 The lovely foliage around the front of the house was in desperate need of some attention too.  The weather was fine for an October afternoon so Jeremy and I decided that we would spend a little energy making that evergreen ground plant of unknown genus disappear.  It very quickly became apparent that this seemingly innocent plant is actually a man-eating death vine that was probably here before the house.  After a couple of hours digging in what can only be called some kind of alien soil... we weren't even touching the surface of what awaited us.  We had shovels, clippers, and yes, eventually power tools; and still we were defeated by "Venis Saskasus" the most tenacious plant on the prairies.  I wish I could tell you that we triumphed over the evergreen brush with never-ending roots and massive colonies of all manner of creepy-crawlies... alas the truck was full.

We have also been working on the attic for the last couple weeks.  The entrance into the attic is a hair-raising accent into the unknown.  If, for some unfortunate reason, a person were to fall; they wouldn't just land nine feet lower than the top of the ladder, but would continue to plummet into the wide open maw of the entrance into the crawlspace... Fortunately, both Jeremy and I are very agile... well I am anyways.  Once in the attic, a person would be met with a nice wide open space just itching for a set of real stairs, and a couple of sound-proof kids' rooms. 

Jeremy and I removed this pile of wood and various random things from the attic in preparation of clean-up and drafting a floor plan.   Some of the things we found were, a table top, an outdoor lawn faucet, a dozen single pane windows and a huge exhaust fan that must have been up there as they built the house.  There is no way Jeremy and I can get that thing out in one piece, not through the hatch of terror or out the mini-me window... so it remains until Jeremy cuts a hole in the floor for the awesome staircase I'm going to make him build for me. 

We pulled the nails and made us a nice pile of Saskatchewan firewood for backyard campfires... "real" firewood is a little hard to come by in the flatlands.