Yard Task Update

10/4/22

Task: Days Spent/Days Budgeted

tasks done this update in bold

(Completed tasks in parentheses)

• Polesawing: ½.5
• Wood rack: 0/3
• Raise retaining wall: 0/3
• Sandbox: 0/2
• Uphill bamboo: 2.25/3
• Downhill bamboo: 0.5/4
• Post-fall polesawing: 0/1
• Trimming 2022 growth: 0/3

Got the new polesaw, got the entirety of the front mimosa and all the side trees except one branch, and also one that fell (the one the last saw lodged in) hung up on some other branches in a way I might not be able to tell until the leaves fall

Tonight was the rainshower that signals the end of the summer dry season, so ahead of that I finished getting things safe & dry. Still need to assemble the firewood rack so that’s just a pile under a tarp for now; the long branches survived last winter under the big pine and this year they’ll have cinderblocks keeping them off the ground.

Excellent time to appreciate how much I’ve gotten done with the yard this season. Just have 2 or 3 days more when the replacement polesaw arrives, then a day sawing up and sorting that, then like 3 days assembling and filling the wood rack, maybe 3 days adding on to the Blueberry Hill retaining wall, some unknown number sledgehammering the rest of the hill up, let’s say 2 days disassembling and clearing out the sandbox, 3 clearing out the uphill and 4 the downhill bamboo, one more day of polesawing once the leaves fall, and let’s say 3 of trimming new growth on the other trees and bushes, some number blowing leaves onto Strawberry Hill, and now that it’s raining again some cycles of pulling weeds and pounding the side yard dirt into a hardpack path up to the fence door…

and that’s IT

Okay so today’s yard work was mostly lugging cinderblocks down to the lower back to set up racks to keep my dried branches off the ground and under cover this winter. The polesaw finally fell out of that branch but then someone walked off with it, so. This time of year sunset tolling the end of work segues into cleaning up in time to go out to a bar, so ta

Man, trimming dead and or misplaced branches has improved the quality of light in the side yard visible through the window by my parlor chair a lot. Getting direct light coming through hitting bunches of leaves not shielded by an overgrown canopy wall and creating a lot more color texture.

kontextmaschine:

Visible in this picture is

:(

Polesawing through a branch that started going enough to pinch the saw there, if I try and pull it off in various directions it just warps and bends the blade, so I tried to sight it so it’s just the edge bit in and hope that heating/cooling/respiration cycles work it out in a day or two

Okay, took the long polesaw up into the canopy of the side yard. Just got one more leg-thick one there, and one that was coming over the roof to steal some sun, then on the mimosa out front there are two misplaced that are already dead; they’re above the electrical line so it’s easier to let one just rot and fall rather than threading it but the other one’ll be gettable to reduce hazard. This is the first year it doesn’t have leaves so it should withstand the fall winds though.

Had enough issues with telescoping ones I’m getting a 26’ mechanically extending polesaw. As in there are segments you add on as you go. Haven’t really been looking that high; next spring I’ll take down the ones shadowed in that go all leafless haunted forest mode waiting to be blown down in a decade or two, then we’ll see

Alright, did one last survey, cut off the two lowest pine branches out back that were outgrowing the cone shape, have one more on the side, hand-chainsaw a torso-thick branch stump when my friction burns heal then chop all the downed stuff, and I have a list of 4 branches from twig to thigh-thick to crop after leaves fall, either cause I want them to get in one more autumn to thicken the upstream (=downhill) branches or I just can’t see clearly with leaves there, then I’m finally for real for real 100% done with the trees

Realized the Zillow listing for my house still has pictures of the trees before the previous owners even chopped off the worst of it to sell and wow. Really drives in how far I’ve come.

Oh, haha, polesawed out front while standing on a slope yesterday in a way that apparently develops (and renders sore) a specific gluteus muscle not all the way towards the bottom of my ass cheeks

Today largely driving in the lesson that if you cut down a branch 20 feet up, it’ll be thicker than you think when it lands

Okay, polesawed a lot of stuff out front, which I previously hadn’t even properly surveyed for 100% tree completion

Alright, realized there were some branches on the tree right out back that were fine as is but would be where the 2nd floor would go but any stuff branching off from the crown from now on would clear the roof so might as well keep it from taking that shape to start with, so cut them down and chopped them up.

headspace-hotel:

So proud of you and your tree!!!

Hm, now that all the branches are done I only have the bamboo and smashing up Blueberry Hill left as ways to dissipate nervous energy by strenuously and productively destroying something.

I get George W. Bush’s thing with clearing brush at his ranch now.

Alright, sawed up all the logs sitting around and until that guy returns with his power-polesaw there is no more wood to be cut. Cut all the canes of the bamboo I’m gonna totally zero out, but digging up the rhizomes will be another 3 sessions at least

So as energy gets pumped up and down with the season between roots and leaves, tree branches mostly grow longer in the spring in proportion to how close they are to the roots, and then thicker in fall in proportion to how many leaves are “downbranch”, with the effect that when a lower branch regrows it gets long and noodly until the length, and thus amount of leaves, thickens it up

Now that that guy helped out with the side yard I’m scrambling to come up with significant chunks of work on the house left. Take the maul and bust up the shitty basement workshop benches made from highway signs? (It’s just reflective paint on pressure-treated wood, I thought they were metal!) Well, still have that bamboo to attend to and some stones to mud-mortar into the Blueberry Hill retaining wall, then the leaves should be coming down for me to blow around and collect and trim the bare new shoots.

The wound from when a branch knocked me down into a rose bush is interesting

kontextmaschine:

This is that big lower branch. With no good straights to salvage, I’m just gonna leave it to rot there to preclude hangers-on from the car-living colony up the road from pulling in and setting up

Aaand, 10 minutes after posting this a guy in a van pulled up, got out, moved it, and drives in.

Then after 5 minutes he got out, and started a fucking chainsaw.

So I ran out to yell, turns out he was actually the 60-something brother of the guy behind me, old stock Cascadian tree-cutter, eventually we work to the same page and he does a lot of power chopping, I convince him that some of how I’m dumping wood behind Blueberry Hill is to prevent rain from flooding the neighbor’s yard and using his woodsman authority he convinces the neighbor wife, and what seemed like it was gonna be the worst episode yet of dealing with the car campers turned out to be a sudden bonus to the tree trimming