I need to tarp the garage roof (with an idea of a home equity loan next year to catch up on many projects), and this tree needs to go:
No idea what this was, but it sat next to the garage long as I can remember. I'm putting all the scrap metal Papu left together on the concrete pad and I'll have Bob Hunter drop off a dumpster to fill later this summer. I want to get all the stuff like that cleaned up before I go for a new appraisal.
Another view of the tree...it's at the limits of what I have for confidence I can take down myself, part of the reason I've let it be so long.
I'm reminded of the line from Saving Private Ryan, "Captain, if your mother saw you do that she'd be very upset!"
I've had these bottles hanging around for 15 years, maybe more. Last hydro test expired in '89, and four of them were 1980psi bottles that were functionally obsolete long before that. Bob had told me back then they needed to be cut open before he could haul them as scrap...after cutting them, I realize he probably had done that before and saw an opportunity to get a young buck to do it instead of him. That there is some high quality steel that eats saw blades for snacks.
Showed this pic to a friend (with a joke about playing with my pole [saw] on World Naked Gardening Day) who commented that looked dangerous. That was well in my comfort zone, the danger would wait till morning!
Finished up Saturday with a heck of a good dinner -- London Broil from Hunter's, salad greens from Brodeur's/Pakulis'
Went to the 10pm Age of Ultron show Saturday night, getting home after 1am...but it's now Sunday morning and time to finish picking up the top of the tree I dropped yesterday. I had already hauled away the brush. The tractor makes this seem like cheating after years of dealing with logs on the ground as I cut them up...
Put tires down on the roof to help absorb the impact when I take down the main stem:
Kinda sort of to plan. This is the dangerous part -- the tree didn't really "snap" down, it got to this point and stopped and I really didn't like how hinky the hinge cutting was going and there was no good way now to figure out which way it would go if I finished cutting the hinge.
Time of the heavy artillery. I've done similar manuevers using come-a-longs to anchors, but this sure was a lot easier. Drove the tractor forward to take the slack out of the system, then did the actual pull down with the backhoe hydraulics:
And again...diesel and hydraulics make things so much faster. This log will need to be split up, so instead of bucking it up like I did the smaller stuff I just hauled the whole thing down to the pile of firewood logs I had delivered and will handle it with the rest.
Finally got the onions and kale planted, plus some beets (one of these years I'll actually figure out how to grow them). Hopefully I can finish the rest of the stuff I should have planted in April in a normal year this coming week...but at 4:30pm I hit the wall for the weekend!
Sunday night is an April-May every single time we have lunch Special, otherwise known as a grilled chicken salad:
