Dodged a bullet

Or some other fast-moving projectile. Actually it was a large limb from a hundred-year-old Norway maple demonstrating once again that Galileo and Newton were onto something. I really did want it to come down, I just hadn't resolved to take the chainsaw up as far as the extension ladder would go and decisively cut it. Now I don't have to.

We'd had a violent storm two nights earlier with hail and heavy winds that brought down some big branches. One of the branches nicked a gutter but missed the roof, saving us the water damage and expense of fixing a leaky roof. So I had some big limbs to clean up.

While I was at it, there was another limb, lower on the trunk, that I was able to reach with the ladder, and the saw cut through it easily. But it got hung up on the low-hanging curve of the higher limb, and instead of dropping neatly to the ground as I'd hoped, it just hung there suspended.

I still wasn't ready to reposition the ladder, climb it to the top, and cut the upper limb. Is this what they call a gut-check? So be it. So I trimmed the branches I could reach off the cut-off limb, buying time while cleaning up some of the mess I'd gotten myself into. This is why some people hire professionals to do their tree work.

It's just hanging there, right? Maybe if I pull on one end of the cut-off limb, it will tilt itself off the fulcrum of the hang-up and let gravity do its work. Fat chance but worth a try, and as I pulled with all my weight, I felt something begin to give, then a big old CRACK, and sure enough something is coming down. Before I could duck and cover my head or spin away in a ward-off move, I fell forward and felt the other branch hit my calves, just a glancing blow to the gastrocnemius, dontchaknow, and just like that everybody is on the ground where they belong. Me, the hung-up limb I'd cut, and the other limb I hadn't cut.

Not exactly the way I'd planned it, but I'll take it. Which I did, piece by piece, after trimming off the branches, back to the woodpile for next winter, luckily with life and limb still intact.