Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Fun With Chainsaws


We had a nice cell of intense thunderstorms pass through last night. In my neighborhood, it rained to hard you could barely see. Same town, other side, my coworker got 1/5 of an inch. So while she hardly had any rain, on my street it knocked down half the ash tree in my sister-in-law's back yard. Which ripped the top half of the electrical service off the wall of house, removed some aluminum siding, and left the power lines at eyeball level across the backyard.


So what's it cost to remove a full grown ash tree? $1200 dollars.


I'm in the wrong business.


Since we (The Wife and I) were going to have to pay to have this stuff hauled away, she opined that it would be an excellent time to cut down those nuisance unplanned trees next to the house. Sure, says I (I know when to keep my opinions to myself). So, load up chainsaw #1, spare chainsaw #2, gas, etc, and head to the SIL's house. To find nothing left of the tree but a six foot tall stump. I'll give them this, for the money they charge, they leave the cleanest yard I've ever seen. I couldn't even find a wood chip. But since I'm here, I might as well take down the other stuff. Which leads me to see why they can charge that much. Temperature in the mid-nineties, no wind, humidity at least eighty percent, every damn wood chip sticking to your skin, sweat running into your eyes while the chainsaw is a short distance from your leg; yeah, they earn their money.


Fun project for the weekend: reduce a pile of branches and logs into sections short enough to load into the 5'x8' trailer, and head out to the dump. Man, I know how to have a good time on my days off.

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