Pa Climbs A Tree

Makin' The First Cut
Originally uploaded by boondockma

For the last couple years Pa has been eyeing a particular tree in our yard. This tree had been dead for some time, and was starting to lean. The biggest problem with that was that it was leaning towards a power line.

Now Pa is pretty good at eyeballing things, figuring out what direction trees might want to fall, and how to manipulate them to fall another direction. This particular tree though, had an added element which made things a bit more difficult to deal with. There was another tree nearby, which was quite healthy, and had a branch which grew out in front of the dead tree. This branch would have caused the dead tree to fall in to the power line, which would not be a good thing at all!

Yesterday, Pa decided the only way to deal with the situation was to climb up the healthy tree and cut the offending branch off before proceeding to cut down the dead tree. And so the adventure began....

Healthy tree is a very tall Spruce, which does not possess a multitude of lower branches for climbing, and the ladder Pa owns , while fine for scrambling up on the roof of our house, was not tall enough to reach the first available branches on the Spruce, so he had to find another way. This is where the old Willow tree came in.

The old Willow tree stands quite near the Spruce, and seemed climbable enough to Pa, and so he began. Although it wasn't nearly so climbable as he had imagined, he did manage to make it up far enough that he could reach out and transfer himself to a branch on the Spruce. He then spiralled himself up and around until he reached the target branch. He settled himself in on the branch, about 30 feet above the ground, and let down the rope he had taken up with him. Nathan then tied the hand saw onto the rope and Pa pulled it up and went to work.

By the end of the day, my 50 something year old husband had finished sawing off the limb in the big spruce tree, proceeded to cut down the dead White Cedar, and had cut it into rounds which our young 'ns transported to their appointed places. I must admit, while I, being the concerned wife, had my moments of worry, and holding my breath, I did rather enjoy seeing (and hearing) Pa's banter last night. His eyes were sparkling. His face was lit up. He sounded 20 years younger.

He really enjoyed himself! And we all enjoyed the heat emanating from the woodstove.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to post more than one photo at a time here, so I had to choose one from the set of four I posted on my flickr last night. Rather frustrating in that I really had fun putting that set together. Thank you, Bev, for explaining how to post more than one photo! It worked! Once again, I was amazed at what my little Canon could do. You can even see the sawdust clinging to the blade of the saw, and flying up in the top picture!

And so it was...just another day at our boondock home..