Shan 7 - Trees 1

 When we first moved to our current house I was very impressed that we had nine trees of various types and sizes on it.  My wife, it seems, is not as big a fan of trees as I am.

Shortly after moving in, I almost pulled down a tree in the back yard on top of her.  We hadn’t realized that it was dead.  Since then, the rest of the trees have been numbered.

The one at the very back of the yard was brought down as it gave too much shade to the pool.  The pine in front died out due to the trees on either side choking it out.  We had the one on the side taken down as it was growing way over our neighbor’s house and power line. 

I brought the last one in the back down myself and was very happy that I was able to drop it without hitting the house, fence, or deck. When one of the crab apples in the front broke in the heavy snow a few years back, I also safely dropped that one as well.  The last one on the side of the house was a different story though.

She has been wanting it down for the last few years as it gives too much shade between the houses, scratches on the roof, and drops a lot of seeds every year in May through the whole back yard, especially into the pool.  I’ve been meaning to trim back some of the branches for the last two years but could never get the kids to hold the ladder for me in spring or fall.

When we finally decided to cut it down, my folks and son were going to help.  On the day, they showed up later in the afternoon.  The tree had one branch extending backwards that we cut off.  It had another paid of branches that extended out over the roof.  I had originally planned to trim them back as well but, due to the time, decided we could probably leave them with the tree.

We notched the trunk, and were worked at opening up the notch when the tree tipped slightly and pinned the chainsaw blade.  It had leaned over onto the house.  I said I could go up on the roof and trim back some of the branches but my folks wanted to go to the store and get another blade for the chainsaw.

While they left, I went up on the roof and cut back a lot of the branches using a hand tree saw.  I cut back enough that I was able to move the tree off of the roof. 

Now, this would have been a great time to wait for my folks to come back and help guild the tree to the ground.  But I thought that if I pushed it off of the roof, with my son pushing from below, it should have enough of an angle to carry it down to the driveway. 

I was wrong. 

The tree cleared the roof, but caught the overhang over the front door on the way down, and pulled it off the front of the house.  So, my son, folks and I spent the rest of the week that I had off taking apart the old overhang, and rebuilding it back on to the front of the house.  We were able to get it reshingled, tarred and caulked, and even had time to touch up the paint before we got snow.

 

 

Buy Snow Tires

 We live in a region that has snow for four to six months of the year.  Growing up, we used to have ‘all-season’ tires on our vehicles and thought that was fine.  Since then, they had come up with specially formatted ‘winter’ tires but we never really thought much of them, until we tried them.

Up here, the temperature can drop to as low as -40 degrees Celsius (234 Kelvin), and regular tires, even all-season tires, get solid and lose a lot of their grip.  Fishtails and sliding on ice are sort of a rite of passage for young drivers.  It’s like drifting, but with actual snow drifts.

When we inherited the van from Shan’s dad, it also came with snow tires.  When we had them installed, we noticed a major difference in the stopping ability.  Instead of that slow sliding which normally accompanied stopping with all-season tires in deep winter, braking occurred at a much shorter distance.  It is a total game changer, and one that I highly recommend for those people who experience actual winter.

It is a major expense, both for the tires themselves, and for the extra rims and possibly sensors needed.  Plus add the cost of having them changed, or having to change them yourselves twice a year.  But it is easily worth it, both in the better traction and safety as well as not having to deal with cracked bumpers, or the hassle of getting stuck.  Plus, your tires will last longer as they are only being driven on half as much.  You can’t use snow tires all year as they as softer than regular tires and wear out much quicker on the summer roads.

The only thing to watch out for is that people behind you may not be able to stop as short as you are if they are still trying to get by on all-seasons.