Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

This is the last day we have a chance to get any significant work done up here in Mehama because we're going to Portland tomorrow afternoon on account of needing to stay at a hotel near the airport due to having a 6 AM flight. (The alternative is to more or less not sleep at all on Sunday night. Fingers crossed that the gloom around here doesn't return to the moderate-to-heavy rain we had yesterday so that we can get out and tackle some of the remaining chores left for me.

The rain relented sufficiently for us to take another crack at the tree on the roof of the old house. Lisa disassembled the portion of the awning in the line of fire so that the falling tree wouldn't smash the PVC pipe frame, and we got to work.

Lisa borrowed from her cousin a cable saw -- that's a length of chainsaw cutting chain with ropes on each end of it -- and we undertook to try and cut the tree closer to its base. We cleared away much of the brush and small branches near the base of the tree, Lisa cut it part-way through with the hand saw, and threaded the cable saw into the cut. We then played out the rope and tugged alternately on the ends. This allowed us to safely saw the tree without being anywhere near it.

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I'm really relieved to get that tree off of the roof. Perhaps on my next trip north we'll be able to get the debris completely cleared away and the wood cut and put away for next year. We have been cutting the wood we cut last year this winter, so stuff isn't going to waste, but we haven't had time to do the really time-consuming work of splitting the maple tree that they cut down last year into manageable pieces. Alas, the tree pieces have been sitting in the field gathering moss and mushrooms ever since last spring.