Clearing Trees

The time has come to take some action on the wild frontier that we know as our front yard. Believe it or not, this is the "after" pic, having removed dozens of little trees. Most of the flora is relatively well maintained thanks to the tireless efforts of our groundskeeping crew, i.e., all of us, but there are sections of the woods that seem to have grown rather aggressively. In all honesty we could probably leave them be and it would be fine, but the spread of all those small saplings does make it a bit unsightly. Plus, as they get bigger, you realize that they are having problems growing because they can't compete for light with the bigger trees. Finally, I think N has aspirations to fly his drone through the woods and the fewer the obstacles the better.

I've been told numerous times that the woods benefit from a little clearing now and then, and mom and the kids have commented on it, as well. In fact, mom and N have been taking some initiative and clearing what they can, but at some point you really need a chainsaw because the trunks are too thick for a pair of sheers.

Enter dad and his chainsaw. Now I'd put the chainsaw in semi-storage while awaiting the delivery of our next load of logs. Once that arrived, it was time to gas it up and start the process all over again. Meanwhile, since the saw was ready, I could go and clear some trees. The funny thing is, what looks like a few small trees turned out to be a lot more work that I imagined. The trees had narrow trunks, but they were surprisingly tall. Plus, I initially thought it would be 3-4 trees, but there were about a dozen. I couldn't even cut them all in one session and will have to go back for more.

Despite the challenges, it feels good to have finally confronted this problem, and it looks a lot better. No time for complacency, however, because there is a lot more work to be done, not to mention the issue of cutting and splitting the firewood. Then again, nobody ever said training to be a real man would be easy.

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Until the next time, thanks for reading.