"So there ah wuz..."

I ache. All over, but especially my right shin. It's been a long day.

Yesterday I noticed some limbs on a couple of trees that had grown far too close for comfort to the power line to the house, and a big limb on one elm that was dead. I figured I'd get them tomorrow before it gets hot. So this morning after I regained consciousness woke up I headed out, got out the ladder and polesaw and got to it. The elm took less than an hour, cutting the thing up to get rid of took longer. Then to the other side of the yard to clear the power line.

Let me preface this with "I do not like working around power lines". Period. But I could get this done without getting too close to it, so to work. However, after the first bit I found that the limbs I really needed to prune could not be reached from the ground or the ladder; I had to get them from the trees themselves.

I don't know what kind they are. They're only about 15-feet high at most, but they'll forever after be known as 'those damn tangled trees'. Lots of little twigs and branches going every which way, so to get to the main problems I had to get up in each with a pruning saw and loppers and
first, cut the stuff I could reach that needed pruning, and
second, cut enough small stuff out of the way so I could get the polesaw to the stuff I had to cut.

First tree, no real problems. Second tree... more tangled than the first, by this time it was afternoon and getting hot(combined with high humidity, oh joy), and a lot harder to get in a secure position to cut. But had things going along fairly well, when the polesaw overbalanced, and I overbalanced and all went forward. No, I didn't quite go to the ground; I did find myself facing back up into the tree with a branch in each hand and one foot on a limb and some definite pains. I hauled my fat ass back into the tree, wilted some leaves with language expressing my feelings of upset, and managed to drag the saw back up and get it done.

By the time I got down I now had a big damn pile of limbs to cut up-some to be fed through the chipper and the rest cut to proper length so I can put them out for big trash pickup in a couple of weeks- and a scrape on one shin that goes from a little below the knee damn near to my instep. Which of course bled and hurt like a sonofabitch when I took a shower. So I was very careful when I dressed to go out and take care of some things to make sure my sock was rolled as low as possible.

So the evening consisted of every bang and strain I hadn't felt earlier presenting themselves for inspection and drinking a lot because I damn near overheated while doing all this. And when I took the socks off I discovered(of course!) that the sock on that leg had worked its way up a bit, so pulling it off took some scab with it. To the accompaniment of more language practice.

I so much do NOT want to repeat all this. The pruning not for a while, the gymnastics practice ever.