Lumberjacking 101

Do you ever wake up in the morning and wonder, "Man, I wonder what it would be like to be a lumberjack?"  I mean, seriously, they have those great mustache/beard combo's and they make plaid look good.

No?  Oh, okay, well I guess I'm in the minority there.  This weekend, I decided to trim/prune the trees in our front yard.  The larger of the two trees had a few dead branches on it that didn't produce leaves this year and the smaller tree just looked a little crazy.

Although normally I delegate the yard work to my hubby, but I couldn't shake the idea of getting the trees trimmed, so after my daughter had been laid down for her nap, outside I went. 

Because the larger tree is well over 10 feet tall, I used a ladder to climb onto the first branch and then climbed to the branches that needed removing.

Notice the arrow, indicating the location of said branches that needed removing.

 This in itself is a feat, as I had to manage climbing the tree while carrying a hand saw (Yes, I have heard there are special tree cutting saws, but we don't have one, and again, I had cutting those branches on the brain).  By this point, I was feeling pretty much like a monkey, climbing around nimbly in the trees.  Once I got the the point where I didn't feel comfortable climbing any higher, I reached with my arm about a foot above my head and started sawing away. 

No one ever told me how much work it is to cut a branch off a tree.  I suppose that isn't a normal conversation topic that is discussed either, but WOW!  My arm was starting to get tired.  My little boy, of course, was sitting safely by the sidewalk telling me I better keep sawing because if my arm got too tired, I'd fall out of the tree.  Normally, I'd simply switch arms, but unfortunately the other arm was holding on for dear life to the trunk of the tree. 

After probably a good 45 minutes, I managed to remove the troublesome branch (my arm kept getting tired, don't judge me).

After that, I deftly clambered my way down like a tree ninja.

 

And by tree ninja, I mean I almost fell out of the tree off the ladder trying to avoid a bee that decided to try and land on my face.

After that, I went and trimmed the smaller of the two trees in our yard.  This process was fairly uneventful, although time consuming. 

4 Hours and 5 humongous garbage bags full of branches and leaves later, our trees have been trimmed.

 

Not bad for an amateur with just a handsaw.