This past weekend I decided that it was time to cut back some of the trees on the lakeside of the house. I am trying to stay 30 feet away from the house of all trees, with a few exceptions for the healthy hardwood trees. With my new chainsaw I cut down several smaller Pine and Maple trees. That alone gave us a better view of the lake.

But I have a few dead Birch trees because of the broze birch borer. There was one birch tree maybe 10 to 15 feet from the house that needed to come down. But there was a 15 foot pine tree in my way. So I started to cut down the pine tree aiming the tree to fall so it just cleared the house. No such luck. That tree fell towards the garage, hitting the service door. No damage. I decided to cut down the birch tree. It fell exactly where I was aiming, missed the house.

Then I had a larger birch tree closer to the lake that was 14 to 16 inches in diameter. It was dead. I decided cut that one down too. I aimed between a larger pine a smaller balsam, my mothers favorite balsam. It took a while for me to cut through the trunk. Once I did the chainsaw ran out of gas and the tree feel. It sideswiped the balsam and removed all the branches on one side. Oh well, too bad. That balsam will need to come down too.

Well at least lakeside of the house is starting to look much better.

On Sunday I had some people at work doing an upgrade on our Systems. Well disaster struck. Systems went down, things had to be fixed. Well what does this have to do with trees? Well there is a group at work that names their systems after trees. We lost some Redwoods and Sequoias. So I was relaly busy cutting down trees!

Joe