kevin_standlee | Trim That Tree!

After we finished cleaning up from the brush burning on Sunday morning, both Lisa and I needed to rest for a while. After a couple of hours, we took up a different challenge: trimming the cottonwood tree. Lisa had looked over what needed to be cut, and decided that her reciprocating saw would be up to it. That's good because the electric chainsaw needs a new blade, and we've not gotten around to tracking one down.

This is the stubby cottonwood tree in the east lot. It appears to have been cut back before, and looks sort of half-dead, but there were a brunch of branches at a very low level, well within reach.

The branches were covered with fruiting bodies.

From painful experience, we know that if left untouched, within a few weeks this would all turn into millions of white, fluffy spores, filling the air with snow that doesn't melt and instead makes both Lisa and I cough and choke when the wind blows.

Lisa ran an extension cord out to the tree and set to work on it with the reciprocating saw. Very quickly, she made short work of the living branches on this tree.

The wishbone-shaped branch in the middle here is the largest one she tackled. She told me to stay back (I had been going in hauling away cut branches as fast I could) as she under-cut the branch, then sawed it from the top down, standing clear as it fell.

We assume that these fruits will not sprout now.

I carted the remains of the tree branches in the wheelbarrow across the east lot and piled them up where we had just cleared the previous year's brush pile. This stuff will need to dry out enough to make a proper fire, which might be as early as this October but is more likely to be about this time next year.

We were very tired by this point, and left that largest branch on the ground for work later. It's large enough that we should be able to de-brush it and cut it into pieces of wood that we can burn later this year after it has dried. It's not great wood, but it should burn, and it doesn't cost us anything other than the labor.

These work boots are the remains of a pair I bought to do some hiking in the Bay Area back when I lived in Fremont. Despite multiple repair attempts, I concluded that these things were at the end of their service life. I'll have to get another pair eventually.

Lisa and I put the tools away and admired our work from our chairs on the front porch. And then we said we were done for the day. Both of us were tired and sore from all of this work. We're not as young as we used to be, but we did manage to get a fair bit of work done.