The Good, Bad and the Ugly

I showed the house and studio from the road. The nice wisteria, the maples and beeches well that's called curb appeal. We believe that our place has to look appealing in order to have customers want to pull in and have a look in the showroom. We have an acre and the back of the property has an abundance of Chinese elms. These trees are like weeds and they grow at an amazing rate, the branches break off with the slightest wind and they drop leaves in the fall that require days of raking. The upside is it's free firewood for our train or house. Free means gas for the chain saw, the splitter, the chipper, the John Deere, the Toyota truck, and oh yeah maintenance of the above. We usually buy our wood from our friend Dr. Pumpkin at $70 a 16" face cord. He says his trees are always free and we just pay him 6 or $7 an hour for his labour. No truer words were ever spoken.