There has been a lot of fine weather in the last two months where my good lady has requested my presence out in the yard to take care of some of the outside work I have been promising to do for the last few years. I could no longer put it off.
The work started with chopping out a lot of minor trees (called 'self seeder' trees) that were choking our rare pine tree. Out with the chainsaw. Then it was cutting down another self seeder that had grown so large the top of the tree had got above the gutter of the second storey. When it would have dropped its leaves they would have choked the gutter and been expensive to fix. As can be seen from the photos, this created a lot of foliage that we needed to get rid of.
The only way for us to get rid of the foliage was to cut off all the smaller branches with a set of 400mm Loppers and a pair of secateurs, so that I ended up with small enough pieces fo fit in our 'Green' waste bin that gets collected once a week. I even borrowed my neighbours bin to help get rid of it all. That neighbour was happy as he got all the firewood that I created.
It would have been easier if our car had a tow bar. Hire a trailer, put all the foliage in the trailer, down the dump, end of story.
My next job also required the use of loppers and secateurs, the hedge had grown so thick the hedge trimmer made no impression on it. Removing the hedge you can see the remainder of behind me, which created a lot more foliage for me to chop up and put in the green bin. I wasn't able to use the chainsaw as it would catch in the thick leaves and branches, pulling the chain off the bar. That can be scary.
What that did to my arthritic fingers I will let you guess at. Needless to say by the end of a day of chopping up foliage with secateurs my fingers were in no state to make the precise mouse movements required for drawing ships. Even my typing was very slow. Down to two fingers.
What will save my poor old fingers, is the wet weather of Autumn/Fall, that is starting to curtail my outside work. Whatever's left will have to wait until next year. (Hooray!)
Hopefully a bit more time for dreaming up and drawing ships will now be possible.
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