A few from Friday first. B called the office from the back of the shop to tell me that, “There’s a praying mantis out here if you want it,” and of course, I did. I named her Roberta, and C manti-sat while I cleaned the bathroom.

I thought about keeping her as a pet, but decided she might have an ootheca left in her, and would rather be free. It’s late enough in the season that she’s already got the “end of life soon” signal anyway.

After I got home, I finished the last four patio squares that I hadn’t time to do on Wednesday.

Pressure washed the ground in dirt from my flipflops, too.

Technically Friday, but I didn’t hear it because I was in the house, having supper, but P said he heard a slow, “craaaaack”, and feared for our roof. The roof was fine, but there was a goddamned big branch on the ground, and a slightly smaller one that it took down with it.

Not a skinny twig.

In good news, it managed to fall not on the roof, or in the flowerbed, or in the pond. It just missed the flowerbed and the pond by inches.

P said that he didn’t want to spend a couple of hundred on a chain saw that we’d rarely use, so he went off in search of a big axe, and I planted asters while he was gone. I’ll put asters in today’s entry because I still have three left to plant. Most of them ended up in the Bee Happy bed because of the drainage, and I also identified the plant in that bed that had made me itch. Well, I didn’t; FlowerChecker botanists did. Stinging nettle!

I had company as I decided where to put the asters; I found him on the screen door. I don’t know whether he was cold or just liked my hand, but he wouldn’t leave. This is also the final photo that includes the black spot on my thumbnail where I hit it with my garden hoe/fork/whatever it’s called on the first day I really worked in the Bistro. April, I think…I was enlarging the cosmos bed, knocking dirt off grass roots.

There’ll be more aster pictures, but I figured out why the ones I’d got at Schnuck’s looked so sad. I’d look sad, too, if my feet were this confined!

I was still planting asters when P got home, bearing a pruning saw, and the only thing that would inspire me to clean up the fallen sweetgum branches…a cute little electric chain saw! He was at Aldi as usual on his supply run, and they happened to have these little chain saws for $35. He snagged one, and once I heard that, I stopped planting flowers and got into the logging business!

That little saw is perfect; no mixing gas, no maintenance before storage, no waiting for a battery to charge…plug it into the 100′ cord and fire it up! It weighs next to nothing, and has enough power for anything I’m likely to do. I need something to cut the odd and sundry branch, and bush honeysuckle that’s too big for my big lopping shears; it’s not like I’m going to be doing any logging with it.

I got the branches cut up, put the big pieces over behind the pond (perches for birds and dragonflies), got out my chipper and shredded a bunch, and anything that wouldn’t chip or had too many spiky balls went to the brush pile. I raked up the small stuff, ran dry bush honeysuckle that I’d cut last week through the chipper to clean the blades after shredding leaves/green spiky balls, and you’d almost never know the branches had fallen. The only casualty was the terra cotta feeder, which I’ll order from Amazon.

In non-tree news, I was so pleased with myself for “liberating” frost asters, but found some growing up near the garage, and more down by the brush pile. Oh well; I still got goldenrod and Jerusalem artichoke.