How Much of West TX is in YOUR

living room? I swan, as Nanny used to say, I thought Dorothy and Toto were gonna be ringin' my doorbell Saturday evening the wind was so fierce! The sky steadily turned from blue to a darker and darker yellow and then began to take on the color of dirty, greasy dish-water. It was just freaky.
How bad was it, really? It was so loud, I didn't realize the small, dead pear tree in the front yard had been blown into the front of the house until I opened the front door to call the dogs in and saw it leaning against the edge of the roof.
Since some of the branches were tangled in wires I thought, "This is NOT good." I fetched the dull lopper and proceeded to lop off as many of the branches that were in the wires as I could. Then, I pushed it off the edge of the roof and onto the ground. "Whew," I thought, "now that's better." And that's when it hit me: I shoulda worked "smarter, not harder," as a certain LawDog's boss was fond of tellin' him.
I SHOULD have attached a lead around the tree, then attached the other end around BEN, just behind his shoulders. My next action would have been to hold a treat in front of Ben's nose and back slowly away from him until he had pulled the tree down. The wind had already uprooted it, so it would have been a LOT easier for HIM to do the heavy work than for my bad back and inferior upper body strength to push it down. [Holly smacks self soundly on the forehead] Maybe I'll have an equally brilliant idea the NEXT time there is a freakish strong wind/dust storm that blows down a tree in the front yard and the Dearly Beloved is off on a hunting trip.