Enchoperation

This weekend, I spent Saturday mainly trying to cut down a tree.

The tree in question has been here longer than we have and its higher branches are leaning over the collection of stones that we laughingly refer to as the road. It doesn’t look too bad now but, come summer when all the leaves have regrown, it does block the street somewhat. Worse, though, is when autumn comes around and the fallen leaves become a bit of a nightmare for everyone.

So down it has to come. And down most of it came on Saturday.

The tree is quite high (over 10 metres) so those higher branches are not easy to reach without help. Fortunately I did have help, and a borrowed ladder long enough to reach the top of the tree.

We started with the branches, cutting them off and then clearing them out of the way. This proved to be pretty straightforward and we made progress a lot more quickly than I had expected.

Unfortunately, the trunk proved to be too much of challenge for my 40cm chainsaw blade, so the tree is still standing, silently defiant.

I’m hoping to be able to borrow a bigger chainsaw in the near future but until then, I have a whole stack of branches that need to be chopped and stacked for next winter.

In fact I have more than a single tree’s worth of branches as I also took advantage of having such a high ladder sitting around to trim back some of the previously unreachable branches on several other trees around the house.

But the logging is for the future because, having spent six hours handling a hot chainsaw, I decided I deserved to put my feet up and enjoy a cold beer before the rest of the family returned.