(Ugh... I really need to lose some weight!)
To avoid dulling the chainsaw, I dug around and under a number of roots before starting up the chainsaw. (Mom helped a bit... I had asked her over in case I had an accident with the chainsaw, but she helped move dirt too. She had hurt her back the other day, though, so she stuck to stuff that wouldn't aggravate her back.)
Then, with some assistance from mom (it seemed to take three hands plus a foot), I got the chainsaw started, then started again after I didn't keep enough pressure on the trigger to prevent it from stalling. Then I went at the roots. The result:
Sawing took longer than I thought it would. I think I wasn't applying enough pressure... I think I was expecting the saw to kind of drive itself in, like other power saws seem to do.
After cutting through the roots (I think I cut two small ones with the axe while I was digging, then five thick ones with the chainsaw), I attached the come-along again, and had a go at pulling the tree over:
Mom thinks she might have seen it budge minutely. I'm not sure it did.
Since it was going to take me a while to dig around more roots, mom decided I could do that on my own while she got in out of the rain. (It started spitting as soon as I went outside to get started, but didn't get heavy enough to stop until later.)
Before she left, mom used a shovel we found in the garage to put my piles of leaves and pinecones from sweeping the patio Thursday evening in the yard waste bins:
(She filled two bins. The pink one I put dead raspberry canes in, then shovelled a bit more of what I had swept up in the back lane.)
I didn't really feel like doing more digging today (especially since it had started drizzling a bit harder), so, after cutting out the dead raspberry canes, I moved dad's junk from an area I want to put my raised vegetable beds to a corner of the patio:
It's kind of a bummer to put that big ugly pile on the patio when I had just gotten it pretty good looking, but there wasn't really a better place for it. I put the biggest propane tank on the driveway side of the garage, but I didn't really want to put the other stuff there... I want to be able to park there, and it would mean carrying it farther. (It was a shorter distance for the big tank to the driveway, because I was dragging it across the ground and around the piles of dirt, rather than tossing it over top of the piles of dirt.)
Look! No junk:
(Some suckers I need to deal with, and not exactly level... but it's a start.)
My garlic and onions (green and walking) are doing well:
It looks like most of the perennials survived the winter too. (There's a couple I'm not sure about yet.)
Ow. I *hurt*. Oh well... at least I feel like I made progress today, even if it's not enough. It's nice that they're now recommending we wait until some time in June to plant live plants (it's okay to seed now, though)... but I only have access to the chainsaw until next weekend, after which it is returning to the lake. Plus I want to get my raised beds started with lettuce, peas, and other "likes it cool" seeds. Argh.
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