Last Sunday, I embarked on one of my annual “maintenance” rituals. Around the beginning of January, when I’m looking for excuses to get productive again, I start sizing up the condition of the trees in our yard. They’re dormant, of course, and I’m not entrenched in all the yardwork tasks that spring and summer will bring. By February, I’ve got my gameplan in mind, and it’s time for tree trimming! I say that with the sort of blissful amnesia that comes from not having done it for a year. Because I forget how much work is involved with trimming trees. There’s the pole-sawing, chain-sawing, ladder-climbing and the dragging away of limbs just felled. Once the tree is looking good again, the job is really only half done. Perhaps not even half. The pile of tree canopy laying in the yard must still be processed into smaller, flatter, manageable piles of limbs. And that means lopping, loading, hauling and — this weekend at least — firing up my cantankerous woodchipper. It only took 11 pulls to start the beast this time — that’s an improvement from last year!
By the end of the day, the debris was shredded into some sort of cellulose coleslaw. I was about a half-gallon of fluids dehydrated, and it was a two-ibuprofen slide into a fitful night of exhausted sleep. But, done! No injuries, and only three more trees to go!
I’m not sure tree trimming counts as woodworking, per se. But no question about it, the “work” part is certainly true!
Chris Marshall, Woodworker’s Journal
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