The Tree Trimming Project

 As mentioned in the Frugal Accomplishments for April post, DH rented an aerial lift and cleaned up storm damage in some trees at DD1 and Honorary Son's house.  He'd been wanting to get it done before the trees leafed out, which would have made it harder both to reach the branches in need of cutting and in terms of those branches, once cut, falling down to the ground without getting further hung up in the tree.  The weather needed to be not wintry, not raining, and not too windy, as well as the ground needed to be not too wet because the yard would have to be driven on in order to get the lift where it would need to go in order to reach the trees.

After several weekends of uncooperative weather, DH decided on the last day of April, a Tuesday, that the time had come, the weather was perfect, the ground was firm, and he was just going to have to take an afternoon off of sitting at the computer doing engineering stuff.  So he rented the lift, grabbed his chainsaw, and the adventure began!

Faline and Buck were intensely interested in both the lift and what Papa was going way up in the tree.  Most of the time I was in charge of keeping little bodies clear of the area where cut limbs were falling.  A few times I had to pull on a rope attached to a hung up branch in order to coax it out of the tree and to fall in a more desirable direction.  Buck and Faline liked that; when I wasn't in need to the rope, they were 'tying' it to the patio chairs and pulling them across the deck.

Over several hours DH was able to cut down all the damaged limbs from last August's tornado, as well as trim up some healthy limbs growing too close to DD1 and Honorary Son's house, plus a few dead-but-still-intact limbs from one of the trees in their front yard.

The kids got to stay up a bit later than their normal 7 p.m. bedtime, and Buck got to push a few of the control buttons on the lift; he didn't want to go up in the bucket with DH.  Faline, on the other hand, was all about going up high!  She wanted to see over her house into the backyard, and DH took her just high enough that she could see over the roof.  

Even Honorary Son got a chance to 'ride' on the lift; he went up to the roof and replaced the chimney cap that had blown off.

Two days later, DD1 sent us a video of Buck.  Apparently he'd been paying even closer attention to the tree trimming process than we'd thought: in the video he was 'cutting' all the living room furniture with a toy chainsaw, while making very realistic chainsaw noises.  Every time the chainsaw was touching furniture 'cutting' it, you could hear Buck rev it up. And every time he was done 'cutting' and moving on to the next piece of furniture he changed the noise to a chainsaw idling sound.  This was coming out of his mouth, not from push buttons on the toy. For someone who's barely 18 months old, to have noticed and filed away for reference that detailed of information on chainsaws is pretty impressive (and cute! The video is soooo cute!)