A Mule and a Hog

(No, the title of this blog doesn't refer to me and Fred.) Yesterday we spent the morning working in the yard. Fred has been thinning out the pine trees along the side of the lawn for several months, cutting them down and trimming off the branches. The past couple weeks I have been loading the branches into the mule and hauling them to the adjacent field to be burned. The mule--or Francis, as we call it--is a 4-wheel vehicle with a cargo bed that we keep at the cabin most of the year, but also use for plowing the driveway here during the winter. It's great for doing firewood and for driving around the acreage at the Hilton, too.
Last week the weather was so nice that I worked on the branches for three days. Every time a guy drove past on Silver Lake Road, he would slow down to watch what I was doing--obviously experiencing Mule Envy. With both Fred and I working on it yesterday, we would haul the whole tree over to the pile and he'd cut the branches off there--saving us the loading/unloading step. I was driving Francis most of the morning, but when it came time to drag a larger-than-usual tree, he told me that he'd better drive--"because I have a penis." "Well," I thought, "that can be fixed!" We now have a pile of pine boughs that is about 40 feet long and 6 feet high. It is going to make a heck of a bonfire once there is snow on the ground.
After a beef roast dinner, we decided to take the Harley out for one last ride since it was such a gorgeous day. November 8th--probably the latest in the year that we've ever ridden it! I hadn't been on the bike since the day after my birthday, and it felt so good to feel the wind in my face and the sun shining down on us. The air smelled like leaves and wood smoke, and we saw several other bikers out, too. There's no ill that a ride on a motorcycle won't cure!
When we pulled back into the yard after two hours, it was clouding up, darkness and the evening chill rapidly descending. We put the bike in the garage for the winter, checking the odometer to see how many miles we'd put on this year. 4500 from May to November.
Life is good with a mule and a hog. And Fred.