Friday, August 23, 2013

Lucy, You Got Some ‘Splainin’ to Do


Lucy Ricardo:
[Lucy gets caught spying on the neighbors] I was, uh... bird watching!
Ricky Ricardo:
Bird watching?
Lucy Ricardo:
Uh, yeah! Do you know that there's a yellow-bellied woodpecker on our lawn?
Ricky Ricardo:
No, but I know that there's a red-headed cuckoo in the living room.
I Love Lucy (1951-57) Television Show

No, I wasn’t caught spying on the neighbors—mainly because we have mostly vacant lots around us. But I was curious when I saw two people in the vacant lot beside our house.

I learned that Jim and Barbara own the lot and live about two hours from Klamath Falls in Roseburg, Oregon. They received a letter from the homeowners association indicating that they needed to create a defensible space on their property in case of fire. This was the first time in the eight years, since they purchased it, that they’d been asked to trim the tree limbs to six feet above the ground.

My gift for the day was to offer assistance to our neighbors. I didn’t have any of the tools that they needed, but I said I’d be glad to loan them a ladder. Jim, who is nearly 70, said, “I don’t do ladders.”

When I went over to check on them later in the day, I asked again if I could help. They said that they didn’t know how they would dispose of the cut limbs with just their mid-sized pickup truck. I remembered that I saw a neighbor with a trailer on his vehicle. I called to see if maybe he would loan it to Jim, but the trailer was a rental and had already been returned.

Our neighbors left a few piles of limbs on the edge of their lot. Who knows . . . maybe someone with a trailer needs firewood!

In Giving,

Robin

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