I didn’t lose my finger

Which was nothing but pure, dumb luck.  This afternoon after I got done at the Land of Færie I decided, given the mild temperature and lack of rain, to try cutting out some of the trees growing in my south fence line, of which I have several.  I began with a live oak, about twenty years old and as many feet tall, whose trunk is within two inches of the fence mesh.  This made cutting more difficult, since I couldn’t do the accepted three-cut method of felling a tree in a certain direction.  Still, I thought I could manage it, so I cranked up the Homelite and began cutting a notch.

The notch cut went fine, but when I started doing the final cut, along the horizontal cut line, the tree began to tilt TOWARD the fence rather than away.  I grabbed at the trunk and tried to pull it away from the fence, but it had too much inertia and all I did was to get my right little finger between the trunk and the top fence rail it was falling across—and the tree did fall across it, taking off most of the skin on the inside of my finger.

Why the tree didn’t crush my finger or cut it off I just don’t know, but it didn’t.  It didn’t even break the bone.  I went in, washed the dirt and bark out of the raw place and got L to bandage it, then went back out with her and, after a Discussion (which is like a discussion, except with shouting) of ways and means to get the tree back on our side of the fence, I gave up, went into the neighbor’s back yard, cut it up and threw the pieces back over the fence to our side.

(The neighboring property is a rental, with whose landlord I’m on very bad terms, ever since he decided to “treat” a patch of poison oak by pouring gasoline on it a few years ago.  The result of THAT little stunt is that I’ll have gas slowly percolating into my yard and garden through the soil for years.  This year, his stunt was to threaten to come and cut down one of my trees which overhung the rent house; I had to spend $200 and some to have an arborist prune the tree back the right way pre-emptively.  I’m tempted to send Mr. Landlord a bill pro forma, since the arborist agreed with me that the tree was in no way damaging the landlord’s house, nor in any danger of damaging it.)

Once I got the oak all back on my side, I took after a hackberry that’s grown up in the same fence line, through the fence.  I got the main branches all down safely, but had to stop when I discovered the poison oak is back with a vengeance, and has threaded itself through the fence like an espaliered rosebush, and I couldn’t get at the trunk without wading into the middle of it.  I guess I’ll have to mix up a batch of Roundup tomorrow and get to spraying, so I can prune out the poison oak in a week or so and start cutting seriously.  In the meantime, maybe I can take out the clump of privet, which is almost as tall as the oak was.  That stuff is an incredible nuisance, because birds are attracted to its berries and eat them, then crap the seeds all over the place so I have volunteer privet EVERYwhere.  And after that it’s time to beat back the bamboo again.  Oh, and the photinia.

We will sing a requiem breakfast antiphonally for George Jetson.  Fnord.