It started out quietly

Nothing on the calendar today, lovely sunshine, then I realized I needed to do the prep for the pumpkin. Also bake bread.

I toasted the pumpkin for an hour and twenty, at 350f, then let it cool, easy slicing and dicing and freezing.

Pumpkin Junction

The rinds in the bowl are now outside for the dining pleasure of the squirrels. Six containers of cooked diced pumpkin in the freezer.

Then a ring at the door and it was next door neighbors who've bought the house they were renting, and brought me a little gift. 

This is the lady we've been giving plants to for her collection. I think it's a phalaenopsis, but I have to check, ages since I had an orchid. If any blogista knows please say.

Then it was lunchtime and I made a wrap of tuna salad, Munster cheese and lettuce. I'm getting into designing wraps. I've decided it's a minor art form.

Then a walk. Then the mail and the day went sideways. Letter from the HOA about the upcoming long-threatened fence replacement. 

There were shrubs or something unspecified which had to be pruned or removed. One week's notice to attest it done or the fencing company would do it and bill.

Translation:  one week to remove my 25 foot native cherry tree which is growing from under the fence, planted by birds thirty years ago. After HOA radio silence for three months because the fencing was held up by the pandemic, which they never mentioned.

So I  consulted with neighbor who had heard nothing, he called the HOA on speaker and he's wonderful about getting information without pushing, uses great language.

The upshot was that we could cut out a section of fence to get access to the tree roots. Neighbor knew I couldn't possibly pay a massive bill for tree removal.

This involved the neighbors on the other side with a bit of the tree their side, who are the other side of the fence about to be cut into. 

Whereupon the y chromosome factor kicked in, neighbor two rocked the tree to show neighbor one it's unstable.

See the angle it's leaning over? This is after a lot of foliage was removed and tossed into the woods.

 Neighbor one has for years been resisting my pleas to help me remove it. He would only trim a branch here and there. He hates to cut trees. So do I but it was dead. Far beyond the lifespan of the wild cherry. 

Which I confided in neighbor two and wife while neighbor one went to assemble all the saws and chargers and pickaxes and who knows what. He winked and I had an ally.

Then I stood back while they spent a long time grubbing it out to the roots. I texted neighbor three who uses wood all winter, to offer them the wood. Cherry makes a beautiful bright fire. Mixed with oak it burns steadily, loads of heat. No response yet.

Explained many times to curious kids why we were felling a tree, asked accusingly. I explained it was dead and needed to go and they grudgingly accepted it then got on with their football game and bicycling.

Much sweeping and finding of tools strewn over both patios, found another charger plugged in and returned it next door, receiving in return an empty container which had held cake, and picking a handful of lemon balm for the other neighbor to start in water.

Many transactions today. Among all this I baked bread.

Whole-wheat, white, oatmeal. Two weeks supply.

I'm going to sit down now and bask in my lovely neighbors.