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Clearing the Big Oak Branch Over the House

After cutting down the last of the oak triplet in the back yard I had to do some cleaning as there was lots of uncut wood on the ground. It took a while to cut it to pieces and carry it to its final storage location. This gave me some time to gather my senses and my courage and start seriously thinking about the big tree cutting job of this summer: the big heavy and long branch right over our roof.
I did not measure the length of the branch but I estimate it to be well over 10 m if not 15 m long. Since we bought the house it had attracted my attention as it really extended right over our roof not very high above it. It was in my opinion the reason why the roof on that part of the house was collecting lots of moss and the roof was decaying quicker than the rest. The branch has two effects: it would drop dirt on the roof and prevent the sun from shining on the roof. Both effects obviously promote moss growth. This branch has therefore been on my list of things to fix as soon as we would get our new roof. On the other hand we had investigated with arborists how much the removal of this branch would be and together with the triplet it came out to be not under $3500. Of course this was a large sum and we did not hire professionals.
Finally now it was the time to get started and I figured getting up on the branch was not going to be difficult but walking out on the limb to be able to cut down one small piece at a time would require some skill I was not sure I had. I would have to walk along the limb pretty much all the way where the piece to cut would be small enough so it would not hit our roof when cutting it off. I figured pieces of about 2 m would be the maximal length. I had the rigging technique down but checked out my book for how to walk the limb. It all looked very straight forward in the book but from below in reality it looked very daring. Finally I took my throwing kit and started tom install the rope in the best position I could find. It took me the better part of an hour to even have the rope in place. By far the most complex rope installation I had done so far, but finally the rope was in place and I was ready to start. I had come home early from work to get the project going but when I finally was up in the tee sitting on the big branch I was wondering how far I would get before the sun would have disappeared. Walking the limb turned out to be easier than it looked from below but difficult enough to dispense the proper amount of adrenaline in my body. I was able to position myself reasonably quickly and rigged the end of the branch I had figured to be the simplest to cut. I triple checked the rigging and estimated the length and figured it should work, but of course was not 100% sure. In my mind I saw the branch hitting the roof and leaving a hole …. but I finally started the sawing. The branch came down pretty quickly and it went perfectly as planned. Only the very last soft tips of the branch touched the roof and I carefully lowered the branch were Ana passed it my the roof and dropped it to the floor. It was starting to get dark at this point, but I quickly took care of 3 more pieces which all went very well. Finally when the furthest 23 had been cut down I came down. Meanwhile it was pretty dark and i was glad to finish to leave the rest for the next day or the weekend.

…. to be continued

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Ivan is Eight

Long time no see on this blog. Busy busy, finding the Higgs-like particle. Meanwhile many very nice stories have happened but I really did not have the time and quiet to write them down. On Friday our oldest, Ivan, turned eight. He is starting 3rd grade in September and we do not even realize how time has flown by. The birthday really started on late Thursday night when I received a very nice postcard from my mother for Ivan. He was still asleep but I showed it to him right in the morning. He trained his German reading skills and did not need much help. He was glad to see his grandparents and his uncle Martin’s greetings. Friday though for me was a normal day of work and we did not really spent a lot of time with his birthday. We had agreed to do it all on the weekend.

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The trendy boots Seb loves, I found, but did not buy.

Saturday came and after some quick garden cleanup (Saturday morning we still had almost two complete trees lying in our backyard from the last weekend) we all got ready and dorve off. The goal was the Marshfield fair, a big fair with lots of attractions, rides, petting farm animals and many, many other things. We had been there, I believe last year Ana claims we had never been there, probably we have really been there two years ago…. 🙂 Anyway, before we swung by our beloved Dunkin Donuts got our fix and made a quick stop in Northstrom Rack. Tax free weekend is always a good occasion to buy new shoes. I wanted to get myself a nice pair of ‘summer shoes’ as I had been using my old worn out crocs because all my other shoes were not anymore in acceptable shape. As usual we found lots of good shoes. I got myself a pair of flip-flops (green), a wonderful pair of Kickers (all leather) and a very nice light pairs of Lacoste shoes (grey leather) and I found a T-shirt I could just not leave in the store. We also found this absolutely beautiful Timberland boots, that Seb was so desperately looking for, but the price tag was a little to high for me, and I do have two pair of leather boots still in the shelve at home. But I took some photos for Seb 🙂

The kids were reasonably quiet and now it was time to get going for the fair. Down North on 93 through Boston was the usual traffic chaos and when we were about to get into calmer traffic, Ana saw a sign indicating the Marshfield fair but it was supposed to start on August 17…. bummer! Luckily we had talked about alternate plans and we had also considered the Rhode Island Zoo (Roger Williams Park Zoo) which was basically so far the same way. So, we quickly changed plans, Ana checked on my phone that the Zoo was actually open (usually it closes at 4pm, but in august Saturday is family weekend until 9pm). Excellent, now we just had another 50 minutes to drive and we arrived without major incidents, the minor incident was a quick visit to DD to get some bagels etc. The zoo is easy to find just past Providence well indicated with the typical brown signs.

The Zoo Crew.
The zoo crew at the zebra terrain.

The whole family got in for under $60 not so bad. The zoo was not too crowded and the kids, in particular Blake had a blast, each carrying their own map trying to navigate or just watch the pictures. Blake loved the elephants and the giraffes, they are so tall, he was completely excited. We did of course also the zebra’s, the antilops, the big turtles (Ivan’s favorite), the red panda, the tukin, the snow leopard etc. etc. It was a great 2-3 hours until we reached the tree house…. where the kids could play with water (Markus loves to get wet, for no reason whatsoever), improvise a puppet play on a little stage (Gisele loved that one) and watch the periscope inside the tree house. When we went home there was just one hour left for me to continue my garden cleanup, I finished to put away the small brush from the two remaining trees and left the big parts to cut for Sunday. When the kids went to bed all were happy and Ivan was content with his birthday and… he got one of Papi’s old laptops that still works but not 100% so I had to retire it from work duty (after almost 5 years). Let’s see what he will learn.

And now you thought that was it, no it was not. Sunday morning I went on with my tree cleanup of the garden, and Ana and Gisele went for some shopping. They came back after almost five hours, Markus was starting to get restless with a wonderful cake for Ivan, Strawberry with lots of whipped cream, very good! We sang a happy birthday and Ana and I started the chillaxing by opening a beer and marveling at our new backyard. Three more tree cutting projects remaining and all would be done and our garden in excellent shape. Apart from an eight year old we now can also see the sky in our backyard, but more about that in another post.