If people can devote entire blogs to the inanity of their cats I suppose I can devote one entry to the deforestation of my back yard. I’m home this afternoon watching a crew from Honest Tree Service remove eleven overgrown scrub pines from my back yard. This is the second time I’ve had them do tree work for me (the first was when a tree fell on our house during an ice storm about four years ago), and this time the job is significantly bigger.

People like to talk about “skilled labor” and “unskilled labor” and look down their noses at physical workers like these guys. I tell you what, these guys know what they’re doing. I don’t care if it’s engineering or medicine or computer programming or automotive work or tree removal - it’s a pleasure to watch people do a job and do it well. These guys are climbing several stories to the top of these trees to remove the brush, then cutting the trunk and using ropes to drop the trees in very tight spots - sometimes with only a couple feet of wiggle room on each side. They do a tough job well and deserve every dollar they make and then some.