It's a woodchipper day in the neighborhood

They're back!  They're whiny!  No, not the preschoolers.  Not even the cedar waxwings.  It's the condo lawn service pruners and their woodchipper truck.

Pretend it is Hendrix playing guitar...

What would Mr. Rogers do?  WWMRD?  I'm still having those "Fargo" associations, but I know Mr. Rogers would want me to celebrate these helpers in my neighborhood.

This helper dude is cutting back the soapberry tree on my back alley neighbor's patio.  The soapberry is a volunteer tree that has grown rapidly in the nine years since a shade tree fell down in a big wind.  Some would call the tree a "trash tree", but it makes red admiral butterflies and cedar waxwings very happy.

I suppose the waxwings will cope just fine with their diminished soapberry.  The ring-necked doves will adjust slowly as they are not ever going to be academic scholarship recipients. I worry about the hummingbird that had preferred seating on a branch that is now gone, but its arrival is many weeks in the future.

Back in high school I joined the Columbia House Record Club because of those ads in the Sunday newspaper.  What a lesson in consumer skepticism that provided!!  Oy.  I can't go into it here.  One of the albums I purchased by choice rather than default was an LP set of the history of jazz.  One of the selections was Woody Herman's "At the Woodchopper's Ball".  Check out the groovy dashikis on Woody's band members in this 1969 video!  I want to see the ring-necked doves it these outfits.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder