The Chainsaw Massacre

Fall is here. The crispness is in the air, and it's starting to rain. Change of season is ok. It means that we can stop working on outdoor projects and start working on indoor projects!

Since last Saturday was still nice, we, pardon me, Colin, decided to do one last outdoor project.

We have many trees in our backyard. 3 of them are MASSIVE, 2 of them are huge, and then there's an assortment of smaller ones, like the ones that continue to grow spontaniously in the middle of the lawn.

The 2 huge trees in our backyard are ponderosa pines. We don't like them. They don't look that good, and they deposit their large needles ALL OVER the grass, killing it in the process. They need to come down.

Since Colin's motto is "try everything once and fun things twice", he decided that he'd take down one of the trees on Saturday. It's about 50 feet tall, and is touching the neighbours fence.

Colin goes outside with our backpack full of rock climbing gear, a extendable aluminum ladder, and a chainsaw. I follow him with a rake. Why a rake? I was cleaning up the mountain of leaves that falls from one of the massive trees. Plus: I was nervous and needed to have something to keep me busy.

Colin hooks up a pulley system to safely get the chainsaw up to the first branch. He puts on the harness and works his way up the tree.

He decided to start with the closest branch to the ground. I use the word "branch" lightly, because it was 10 inches in diameter and about 20 feet long, with many many other branches stemming from it. Hardly a BRANCH! More like a secondary tree!

Anyways. We "discussed" (or argued) a bit over how it was to come down. All of a sudden, the branch looks bigger that it did in the past! There's only a narrow 4 foot wide walkway between the house and the fence, and this "branch" and all of its parts have to land in that space.

After losing the argument, and pleading that we get a professional to do it, Colin starts up the chainsaw and I back WAY up. Instead of chainsawing it a bit at a time, he decides to sever it all at once. I back up more.

He got about halfway through the trunk and.........

I don't even know how to describe the sound! It was horrible! The loudest wood-ripping sound I've ever heard, followed by a series of deafening CRACKS as the tree hit and broke on:
-the retaining wall
-the porch railing
-the porch cover
-the roof of the house

The house actually SHOOK! I saw it! It was like an earthquake hit!

The "branch" looked a LOT bigger laying on my poor house than it did when it was still attached to the tree!!

It turns out that if the branch fell any more to the left, it would have taken out the neighbours fence, and if it fell more to the right, it would have taken out our porch cover and possibly put a hole in the house. But miraculously, everything is FINE! Could it be Colin's tree-chopping skills? Or divine intervention? I favour the latter!

It took about an hour to clean up the mess and chop up the main part of the branch (which provided us with enough firewood for 2 months). The rest of it will probably have to be taken to the dump in 2 or 3 truckloads.

So after it's cleaned up, Colin heads back up the tree. There are still LOTS more branches to chop down!

I think, "YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!! I only have once more ounce of sanity left!!".

To my relief, and possibly to maintain my sanity, he climbed back down, suggesting we should get a professional to do the rest.

Try everything once, but only FUN things twice!

I love my husband!! His sense of adventure always keep life extremely interesting (or extreme and interesting).