And the winner is…

Not that there was ever a competition. These four blokes (in alphabetical order), Charlie, Dave, Joe and Paul, are all absolutely top notch geezers and most magnificent manly men.

Remember this?

Oh, my goodness! Where has it gone?

Well, thanks to Dave last year giving me the wood from trees he’s had taken down on his property (he and Jan do not have a wood stove) and Charlie lending me his splitter…

… and Joe helping me shift the split wood to the shed and Paul, astonishingly, managing to split most of the Arbutus into which the splitter could not make a dent, I now have a half full woodshed.

Manly men totally rock.

Unlike Monday’s porch building project, when my role was reduced to tea lady, yesterday I was actively involved in the stacking, so didn’t realise until after the job was done that I’d failed to get any photos of the project unfolding. Most disappointingly I do not have a photo of Paul Bunyon splitting the Arbutus. So I will have to settle for a photo of him rocking in another way – doing a spectacular job on the air guitar at last year’s panto.

Just how manly is this man? Well, suffice to say he didn’t’t even blink when I informed him that his first appearance in The Return of Robin Hood would be in a pink peignoir.

You can’t get much more manly than that, can you?

Mind you, Joe does a pretty good line in pantomime villains, so definitely no slouch in the manly department.

Many, many, many thanks to these four manly, manly, manly men.

No point in saying I couldn’t have done it without them because, put simply, I would not have done it without them.

Oh, and a special thanks to Charlie, who stopped by yesterday when all the chopping and stacking was going on to pick up his splitter. When I thanked him for the loan, he said “Any time.” Those two magic words. “Seriously?” I asked. He nodded. I smiled. I’m not quite sure he fully appreciates the carte blanche implications of what he just said.