Posts Tagged ‘mini chainsaw’
Impressive Overachievement
It’s been over two weeks since Asher and I discovered a fallen tree leaning across one of our trails in the woods. At the time, Cyndie was in Florida and I needed to wait for her to get home before bringing out the big chainsaw –a tool I’ve agreed to never use when home alone– to clear the path.
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Alas, this many days later and I’ve allowed myself to disregard that project. In my way of thinking, I should get out the Grizzly ATV and hook up the trailer to haul the saw into the woods and carry the wood back out. Then, I realized I should be resting my shoulder to allow it to better heal, and holding the big saw seemed a bit much.
I decided the tree could hang there for a while since it was easy enough to duck under. It is unsurprisingly easy for me to put off chores for some other time.
With our continued dry weather and the forest as dormant as ever, each time we walk around in there I spot another vine to be removed from smothering one of our trees. Cutting down vines takes a lot less effort since I can easily hand-carry the trusty Stihl mini chainsaw on walks with Asher.
I remembered to grab it yesterday to cut out another gigantic woody grapevine that I’ve walked past countless times and somehow ignored until now. I didn’t even try to pull it out of the tree. Just cut out a six-foot section of it and carried on with following Asher along the path.
Then we came upon the tree leaning across the trail. Hmm. Mini saw in hand. Fully charged battery. Could it handle a job this size?
Yes, yes that little branch pruner could. You may notice there were already a number of cut sections of fallen trees on the ground in that spot. For now, I cleared the pathway and left the freshly cut pieces on the pile.
Asher became fixated anew on whatever the heck might have been living in the dirt under all the chunks of wood.
Our dog is tenacious when it comes to digging for critters, but that Stihl GTA 26 is an even more impressive overachiever.
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Vine Interruption
What started as a typical walk through the woods with Asher yesterday afternoon suddenly shifted on a whim to become an industrious “de-vining” effort. Because it is easy to navigate off the beaten paths this time of year, I frequently allow Asher to wander wherever his nose takes him. Sometimes he turns me around enough that I lose my bearings. Asher can bring me to spots where I’ve never stood before.
In one such spot, I noticed a trunk of grapevine that was thicker than my wrist. We have a general policy of favoring our trees over opportunistic vines but some of these in the center of thick growth have evaded our notice long enough to become monstrosities. The problem is that the rare times I discover such huge vines I don’t have the tools with me to do anything about it.
Yesterday, I decided to act on my chance. With Asher unknowingly tagging along, we marched the long walk back to the shop to get the small chainsaw trimmer and then back again to take on the large, woody vine trunks.
There were more than I realized. In every direction I turned, there were additional branches of the serpentine limbs either climbing another tree or putting new roots into the ground. With the power of that saw, I severed the link between every large chunk I could find.
I’m not sure what I will do with them, but I brought back a couple of trophies from the wildly twisting large sections.
I had tethered Asher to a nearby tree while I worked to find as many of the aggressive tree-climbing troublemakers in sight. Upon exhausting myself of the effort and returning to collect him, I found Asher gnawing on a bone he had found near a large hole he had dug.
I sensed we both headed back to the house with a similar air of accomplishment.
Now, if I can somehow maintain the surveillance in that thicket throughout the coming growing season, that would be just great. Otherwise, they will just return with a gusto unmatched by all the many plants we actually prefer to see thriving in our forest.
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Over Cooked
I worked outside in the humid heat yesterday for a little too long. My clothes were saturated with my sweat and my fingers were getting pruney even though I’d long ago ditched the gloves that were too soaked to be any good to me. I knew I was pushing the limits of my stamina but I wanted to finish some mowing with the push mower.
As I made my way to the shop garage to put away the mower, I could tell my muscle response was getting rather sluggish. It was past my dinner time and my body was running on fumes. Even my hearing and vision started to waver a bit as I cleaned up the deck of the mower before slowly making my way back to the house.
Before I could even peel off the soaked clothes that were clinging to my body, I succumbed to a powerful desire to lay down for a few minutes so no muscles needed to do any work at all. The cool tile floor of our sunroom fit the bill nicely. What a relief to immediately rest my entire body.
When I did try to move again, my muscles wanted to cramp. Cyndie brought me an iced electrolyte concoction to drink.
I was cooked. Overcooked. Cyndie offered to serve dinner, which I needed, but I was feeling nauseous and asked for a brief delay before eating. Getting out of my soaked clothes was going to feel good but I wasn’t looking forward to the effort it would require.
The reward for that effort came in the form of a shower. It was weird to enter the shower with hands already pruned and then have the pruning intensify. I wanted to make it short because I was too tired to stand for long but our shower has a spot to sit. My body chose to spend a few seconds seated under the spray whether my mind wanted to or not.
The air conditioning has been on in the house for a couple of days and that soon had me feeling colder than I wanted to be, which is weird after being too hot just 15 minutes earlier.
I started the day using our hedge trimmer to clean up the new growth on the natural green wall along our north loop trail. That tool is my new favorite, for sure. We now have two pathways tunneling beneath the branches of our big willow tree.
We got new blades for the little Stihl hand-trimming chain saw so I put one on and cut down some pine branches that were sagging into the pathway. What a huge difference a sharp chain makes.
The clouds have disrupted our viewing of the first supermoon of the month. Cyndie captured an interesting cloud formation on Wednesday that looked downright tornadic when I viewed it on the small screen of my phone upon receiving it from her in a text.
See what I mean?
Looks like we will be waiting for the blue moon at the end of the month for that eery glow illuminating views out our windows in the middle of the night. Cue the howling coyotes…
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Limbing Up
We have a fair number of big trees that need professional attention to bring down high branches and widow-makers. I received a quote for the work but the guy said they can’t start until the ground dries up enough to support their machinery. I don’t know if it will ever get that dry.
While he was here, I asked his opinion about pruning the lower limbs of our evergreen trees. Some trees are getting so wide at the bottom, that I can barely get around them on the garden tractor when I’m mowing. He offered no objections to limbing up the trees about 3-4 feet.
For all the years we’ve been walking our property, I’d never noticed that our neighbor’s evergreens are all “limbed up” 4-6 feet until I started thinking about doing it to ours. I see that as a good sign, that I didn’t notice. It never looked “wrong” to me on their lot so I trust I won’t dislike the look on ours.
I’m starting with the trees that most annoy me when mowing and then will decide about doing more of our others after I see how the first few look. It’s really a great problem to have, trees getting so big.
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One of the challenges of pruning so many branches is that it creates large piles of cuttings that need to be dealt with later. Right now I am thinking about trimming off the smallest portions of the cut branches and creating a pile of the woodiest cores to be run through the chipper. The needles and small ends can be tossed into the brush piles I’m creating as a natural hedge fence along part of the northern border of our property.
Working on the second tree yesterday using our cool Stihl mini chainsaw, I was cutting so many limbs, one after another, the machine shut down because it got too hot.
Too much of a good thing, I think. This handy little chainsaw is a really slick addition to our cutting tools. The problem with it is that it works too well.
I have to fight the urge to cut too many branches because it is so easy. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean I should.
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Relative Something 