We've started doing some work outside.  Last week was beautiful weather - so we tilled some ground for the garden.  Was great to get outside and work.  We will have two Karenni refugee families (from Karenni State in Burma) that will use the garden space.  David ran the tiller for the first time in his life.

Came home the next day and the Karenni families had taken out all of the grass and mounded up the rows. Looks beautiful and is ready to plant in.

We had a very large tree right next to the house that was going to shade the garden as well as be potentially dangerous over the house in years to come.  The Karenni men are extremely skilled at cutting down trees - they climbed the tree in no time and started chopping off the limbs.  The men are hard to see in this picture because I had to stand back so far to get the whole tree (and to avoid falling limbs) one of the guys is a little higher than the top of our house in this picture.  They scaled the tree with no shoes or ropes and chopped down the limbs with machetes.

They did use the chainsaw at the bottom to bring the whole tree down.  We paid them in chickens and they went on their way.  David finished chopping the tree up (once it was safely on the ground).

We're VERY happy no one got hurt - I'm fairly confident we were the only ones anxious throughout the whole process, everyone else appeared calm and confident.