Thursday, August 18, 2011 Lethbridge

5:40 am

The temperature is +8 C, with a high predicted of +19 C.

From the Environment Canada website: Today A mix of sun and cloud. Fog patches dissipating this morning. High 19. UV index 6 or high. Tonight Mainly cloudy. 30 percent chance of showers this evening. Clearing overnight. Low 7. Normals Max: 25°C Min: 10°C.

8:30 am Technology

I have begun updating my apps on my iPhone. There are 9 apps that require an update. This took almost an hour as there was also an update to the iPhone that took 45 minutes.

Now to look at my iPad2. The first step for this device is to recharge the battery! Done. As with the iPhone, there were a large number of updates to the various apps that I have loaded on this device.

2:30 PM Life

There was a 3 hour set-back this morning with our raised garden project. I suddenly realized that there would not be enough room between the placement of the the 12' bed structure and the chokecherry tree near the fence. The problem was not the tree itself but the root structure just below the surface which meant that the ground would have a noticeable slope making walking across that area difficult.

The solution was to move the structure further away from the tree. Okay. But the structure was already half full of soil. Which now had to be removed before we could manage to drag the structure to its new location. It is now in its new spot and everything looks fine. We have made progress on leveling the remaining ground where the stone pathway will be, but there is still a few hours of work ahead of us.

Now for the surprise.

Our neighbour had called a landscaping crew to do some work on his yard. I spotted the cherry-picker truck and asked the worker if he could give me an estimate on what it would cost to remove our may tree. The price was much less than I was expecting so we had a quick discussion and decided to go for it. The tree is now gone. We knew the tree would have to go sometime as the main trunk was leaning badly. It was also clear that it was not a job that I could do as there was no room in any direction for the tree to fall without doing some damage to fences or our yard. But we were not planning on removing it this year.

Here is a photo that I took the next morning showing the yard without the tree.

It is going to take a few days to get used to the openness.