Tree surgery
Most notable time of the weekend was the time I spent trying to throw a sprinkler head up into a maple tree. There was a reason for this, one which will probably have to be explained if the tree service guy shows up tomorrow. Spouse noticed the other day that a huge limb had fallen down out of the ancient maple in the front yard. That happens every few days — it has dropped more wood than it ever produced, and it’s not at all a well tree, but it still produces a LOT of leaves every year, so it’s not precisely dying, either.
But this particular limb caught on the way down and hung up on the cable that brings cable into our house — meaning television, internet, and telephone. Everything except juice. And it is stretching the cable a bit, so it should definitely not be allowed to hang out there over the winter. But the cable company doesn’t do tree trimming (unlike the electric company, which is not implicated in this particular branch issue, or the phone company, whose services we unceremoniously curtailed just a few months ago in favor of one of them newfangled cable phone thingies). So, we were on our own.
Got out the 12 foot step ladder and trudged out into the snow yesterday morning to see what we could do. The branch is caught at one end in the crotch of the tree, and on the other end is rather magically intertwined with the cable wires, both of which are perfectly lodged in the crooks of twig branches. We trimmed off some excess but the branch itself was way too thick to cut with our loppers. So, Plan B. I got some rope and looped it around the branch (bowline and 12-foot-pole, don’t fail me now!). Then, if only I could get the line up over a higher branch of the tree, perhaps I could lift the broken branch up off the wires. But that proved difficult — I couldn’t really throw from atop a slippery ladder in the snow, and the limb I wanted to get over was too high to get the rope over by itself. I needed a weight on the end.
Enter the sprinkler. A little plastic sprinkler head, about 6″ across, with a handle in it that was perfect for a loose hitch. I took several throws, but I could not get it up where I wanted it. (By this point, I was only hoping that the neighbors assumed this had something to do with my biennial Christmas decorations, for I truly don’t want to be thought of as the kind of man who tries to throw lawn sprinklers into maple trees in December. Though clearly, I am just such a man). Finally, with the aid of the aforementioned 12-foot-pole and a paint brush attachment, I got the rope and its yellow plastic weight up and over and down, and we were ready to give that branch a righteous tug up and off the cable.
Yeah, that happened. No, what happened was, in fact, nothing. That bastid is wedged into that tree and nicely entangled in the cable, and there is just no way I’m extricating it by myself. So now my two options were A) call for help, or B) go to the True Value, rent a cherry picker for a day, and have fun with it. Incredibly (because I do not ask for help,), I went with Option A, though if the guy from the tree service doesn’t show up promptly, there’s still a chance I’ll be executing Option B next weekend. Stay tuned.