Monday, June 28, 2010

Mulch Ado about Nothing


Saturday brought a surprise.
The man with the mulch chipper brought it on down and got started chipping.
It doesn't look too menacing, does it?
I don't think its looks warrant its name:
 
Even the warning label seemed a little over the top:
I guess this is the part that will get you if you are unfortunate enough to get caught on the conveyor belt:
I sat and watched it chip up trees, trunks and stumps for a while and it was a beast.
Of couse, it had a little help from its incredibly menacing friend, "Pinchy"
Pinchy was hungry.  He would take a stump like this and chomp it into two pieces like this:
He would take trees and crack them in his powerful jaws.
Even when Pinchy took a little nap at lunchtime, he had a tree trunk for a pacifier.
I loved watching the teamwork between Pinchy and the Beast. Pinchy would grab the logs and turn them into matchsticks,


then the Beast would chew them up and spit them out as mulch.
It was hot enough to broil your brain on Saturday, so I took a cue from the dogs I have known.  I sat down in the shade of the idle track hoe.  Nestled down under the cab and between the tractor treads was 10 degrees cooler than standing out in the sun and gave me protection from the occasional tree shard that would kick back from the Beast.
Later in the evening we went down to see the mulch pile.  Here's how it stands up to a 6'4" boy.
Pinchy got a little nervous about our presence.  I think he thought my model would steal some precious mulch, so Pinchy grabbed him:
Luckily, I distracted Pinchy with a nearby log and the model escaped unscathed.
In the end it was mulch  ado about nothing.

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