I suspect I am not the only spouse to encounter this phenomenon – your DIY-inclined other half just has to have a specific tool. Right. Now. The usefulness is clear, the need is obvious, it is a must for every homeowner. Obviously. So they run out and buy the tool. Which sits in a box for weeks, months, years… Then they finally use it and say “See, we DID need it!”
Which is what I got to hear Tuesday night when Aaron pulled out the chainsaw he’d purchased half a decade ago. In 2009, we had some tree damage in the backyard of our NY house and he’d borrowed his dad’s chainsaw. “We can’t keep borrowing his chainsaw, we need our own.” he said after we’d cleared out the yard. So he ran out and bought one. And then it sat on a shelf, still in its box. And moved to a new state and a storage unit, still in its box. And sat on a different shelf in the same box. Tuesday night, it came out of the box and Aaron had a couple Tim Taylor moments. Not to mention some smug comments because he was right…5 years later.
He bought those tinted safety glasses months ago too.
The reason he broke out the chainsaw is that we did some pre-contractor prep in our backyard. We’re getting groundwork done before getting a fence installed, so we needed to take down our temporary fence. While the wire fence was gone and the rest of the yard was open, we decided to pull out two ugly bushes, and trim up the bottom of the cedars.
Clean and open, ready for work to commence.
The tree on the left is the one that got the most obvious trim – a gnarly stump from a piece that broke off years before we ever owned the house. The others just had their little fuzzy trunk branches and some branches up against the deck taken off. We also took out a couple of interloping trees that were snuggled up to the cedars.
The dogs wanted to know what the hell we were doing.
They were even less impressed to discover that potty breaks are now on-leash.
I’ll post more when there is something more to see. The work should be done by Friday, but Delta and I will be heading off to a weekend seminar, so you’ll have to wait until next week. After that, we wait a couple of weeks to let the grass grow, then bring in the fencing guy.
We’re getting a 100×100 area fenced, which is so much better than the 20×40 patch the dogs have had for the last two years. Now THAT will be exciting! And something that won’t take 5 years … or even 5 minutes … for us to use.