In response to one of our earlier lawn related posts, friends of Aimee, Maria and Pete, kindly gave us their old mower and when I say old, it’s only three years old and for most of that time it’s been in storage. Maria and Pete have a steep lawn and as this is a push mower they upgraded to a self propelled model. The mower is in great condition and should serve us very well. We’ll probably get it serviced later this month so it will be ready to go this spring. Thank you again Maria and Pete and we look forward to taking you out for beers and burgers at The Anchor or Buns sometime soon. Incidentally for anyone reading this in the Bay Area, Pete designed and built the sound studio labs at Expression college in Emeryville in the late 90’s.
So this weekend we were blessed (or cursed) with warm weather, temperatures hit 65°F (18°C). It was a bizarre shift from full clothing to shorts and t-shirts but it was blessing for working in the garden. Tomorrow temperatures will drop below freezing. Marie told us that this was the warmest day in the area since 1975.
We’d also like to thank Don the Johnson for lending us two cordless chainsaws. I was bit dubious as to how they worked, but I eat my words, they were great, so thank you Don. We only used the smaller model as it was easier to handle up in the trees, also I tried the Dewalt for about 15 seconds and the chain didn’t seem to run well on the blade, nor did it cut well, so possibly a new blade or tune up is needed, which we will look into in return for your generous loan. In the end I think we did a decent job at cutting the trees in a manner which still left the tree looking wonderful.
By the I’m wearing a harness so I can securely rope myself to the tree/ladder. I also secured the ladder to the tree which was fortunate as tree limbs often fall unexpectedly. A lot of the limbs we cut off had a lot of vines holding them up so there were a few occasions when some of the heavy limbs swung back and smacked me on the shoulder or glanced off my head, luckily I was wearing a full face visor. It would be nice to get some advice on how to do this in a safer manner so I’ll ask my arborist friend Win. I think for now, we have pretty cut off the majority of branches and anything else can be left to the experts.
