Chainsaw Fun

Dan gave me a chainsaw for Christmas. I know it seems strange, and at the time I thought it was a little peculiar a gift myself. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how perfect it is. I love power tools, and destruction, and gardening as well. So it’s perfect.

Sunday was such a beautiful day that I decided to finally bring out the chainsaw and start cutting things down. Our first discussion centered around loud power tools and Sunday mornings. When is a good time to start making noise? We both decided that anytime after 10am is safe. It was actually around 2:30pm when I started cutting things down, as we had decided to clean out the garage instead. (It looks beautiful now! All organized and clean. Love it!)

The first thing I decided to cut down was the fence at the side of garage. This fence cut right across the middle of the yard and really made no sense. Originally I had started to try to dig up the posts, but that was impossible. So, I cut them down. (see video)

Up to the point when I had finished cutting down the fence, everything had gone really well. I was careful to wear my protective eyewear and position myself so that I wouldn’t be cutting towards myself. I was feeling pretty confident. That is probably why it all started to go wrong.

There is (or was) a dogwood tree growing behind the fence, next to the big oak tree. It was too close to the oak and was prohibiting the growth of a beautiful holly right in front of it. We decided that we should cut it down. Being confident (and stupid) we planned for about thirty seconds as to what would be the best way to cut it down. It didn’t look that big after all. Dan threw a rope around the top of the tree and we decided that of course it was going to fall exactly the way we wanted it to; the rope was just a precaution. “ZZZZZZZ” went the chain saw. “CRACK!” went the tree. “NOPE!” went Dan, and the tree fell…right onto my neighbors’ fence. It was bad enough that I had just dropped a tree on Norm’s fence, but when I looked over the fence I saw that Norm had been watching the whole thing.

“Norm, I dropped a tree on your fence.” I told him casually. He walked over to peruse the damage. His fence was holding up nicely under the strain. Only one slat had been knocked loose and was hanging to the side.
“Looks like you didn’t rope it off properly,” Norm told me drawing deeply on his Marlboro.
“Rope it off? Huh?” I thought. “Well, you know, amateurs with chainsaws!” I joked with him. He didn’t smile.
“Can I come over to your side so I can cut this tree off your fence?” I asked him and he unlocked his fence and walked away.

Dan stood on one side of the fence while I cut all of the branches off on Norm’s side and handed them over to our side. Finally, it came down to the last big branch. I cut into it and the branch fell off and the chainsaw connected with the chain link fence and the chain on the fence wrapped it self into the chainsaw. “Crap!”
I left the chainsaw hanging from the fence and ran around to the other side. The tree was off of the fence and lying, dismembered in the yard. I was really starting to hate this chainsaw. I got the wire cutters and cut some of Norm’s fence apart and pulled down the chainsaw. I was covered in sweat and sawdust and chainsaw oil.

The weepy stump of the dogwood made me feel depressed, as well as Piper’s admonitions that if I cut down one more tree she was leaving home for good.

The chainsaw is now cleaned up, tightened up (the chain had gotten stretched after wrapping itself up with the fence) and sitting quietly on a shelf in the garage. It looks so harmless and small.