Clearing out yesterday's fallen branches

Yesterday a big storm came through, with heavy rain and strong winds that tossed branches around the yard and even cut out our power for about 45 minutes.  (We were lucky on both counts--other people in the state had trees fall on their houses or lost power for much longer times.) Today was a reasonably nice day, so this afternoon my five-year-old and I went out to clean up the fallen branches that were scattered all over the yard.

My son alternated between picking up branches to put in my wheelbarrow and playing with his wooden Thomas trains; sometimes his trains helped carry the branches over. Henry, the big green tender engine, was especially helpful. While we worked on collecting the branches, we discussed Henry--his helpful but sometimes "arrogant and vain" personality (as my son described it), his fear of rain, of wind, and of heights. Every once in a while it amazes me not just that he's talking so much, but that we have things to talk about (though our most content-rich conversations seem to circulate around Thomas and his friends, which I know more about now than I ever wanted to).

Of course, now that we have all of these branches, I have to figure out how to get them to the dump on Saturday...