I am alone today as this is one of those Sundays my wife has to work.It is hot, supposed to get near 100 today, and I am bored. Before she left for work Linda left me a list of "chores" to do if I had the time.Among the list of "honey dos" to do was to repair some loose soffit panels on the back side of our house that were blown loose by the storm we had a couple of weeks ago.After that I was supposed to do some laundry and general housekeeping chores, you know, "womans work".....(Sorry Sunny
)I thought we had came to an agreement the last time she tryed to domesticate me and I washed her antique hand made quilt in the machine with her bright red joggers while trying to remove the transmission fluid from her quilt that I accidentally spilt on it....(don't ask) How was I supposed to know that cloths were to be washed separately according to color and fabric type ? How was I supposed to know that it IS possible to use too much bleach? Women!
These thoughts and others were going through my mind as I got my ladder and tools out and repaired the loose soffit. As I finished the repair I noticed one of the several huge tree limbs dangling from the top of a tree in our back yard-broken off but hanging by loose bark from the high winds.Now this particular one is in a fenced area of our yard where our dog lives.
We have several trees damaged in similar ways on our property and our son-who is a professional tree trimmer- is going to trim them for us sometime soon when time allows.
Anyway,I got to thinking that since I already had my ladder out I might as well see if I could get a rope around that one big limb and yank it out of there before it fell and possibly injured the dog.I moved the ladder under it-but even standing on the top rung of the ladder-was inches short of being able to reach it to get a rope on it.The only way to get it would be to climb the tree.....or was it?
I could clearly see the broken base of the limb about 40 feet up.It was hanging by a few fibers of wood.Perhaps a few well placed shots with my .22 would send it down? 18 shots later it came crashing down! Hey, I was on the something! A quick trip to town to stock up on some ammo and I was ready to do some "serious" tree trimming!
A few hundred rounds later most of the limbs are on the ground!My wife will be so happy that I got this potentially dangerous job done,that I doubt she will even notice the dirty laundry!A couple of the limbs are still hanging because I couldn't safely shoot in the direction they are in. One huge hickory limb proved too tough for the .22-but a few rounds from the 30-06 brought it down!
My neighbors are acting a bit nervous....I guess I better call them and let them know that I was only trimming trees. Say,maybe I could offer to trim theirs for them!
