Our road has been a sheet of ice for 6 days making running the scooter very unsafe. This morning it looks to be warming up - yeah!I will have a major speed bump - ditch actually - to negotiate when I do the mail run later this afternoon. The ridge line trees behind the house have grown enough that they interfere with satellite TV signal transmission. Only a minor annoyance for local news but now an emergency. The BCS championship game is only days away - GO OREGON! The satellite guy said that we would have to dig a ditch across the garden, lawn and road and put the dish were an ornamental plum tree stood. Tree versus satellite dish? As an environmentalist, I have always harbored Auden Nash's "I think I shall never see, a sign as beautiful as a tree" sentiment. (His poem was published under a series of 3 pictures: #1 a beautiful evergreen tree. #2 the tree cut down. #3 a billboard standing over the cut down tree.) I digress. We compromised and cut the offending branches off the tree but left it standing. Fortunately we have really good friends who love to help out around here. Dennis is a professional dirt mover. He located the power and telephone lines; got my very frozen tractor motor to run and dug the trench. Meanwhile Courtney dug through Dennis' pick-up, got out the road crew implements and Dave supervised the whole process.