A huge dead limb lay on the ground next to my old crab apple tree. Sighing over the loss, I crossed the lawn to take a closer look. The tree had been old but still beautiful when I had moved here almost forty years ago. Slowly, though the years, some of the tree’s big limbs stopped growing leaves. Yesterday, a wind storm had broken this limb from the tree.

Putting a foot on the limb, I tried to rock it back and forth, testing to see if it was lightweight with rot. It was not. It felt solid and heavy. How was I going to be able to pull it back to the refuse pile at the back of my property? I knew the answer to that question only too well. I would have to cut it up with my trusty little hack saw.

It took me a long time to cut the limb into several logs. Eventually I had chunks that were light enough to handle. Wiping sweat from my forehead, I looked around my yard. The exercise was probably good for me, but I was glad I didn’t have to do this often.

When my daughter asked if I wanted to come with her to look at a house she was thinking of buying, I eagerly accepted the offer. The house was big. The yard around it was beautiful but overgrown and in need of pruning. I said, “Niki, this is a great place for you and your family to live!”

Once the papers were signed and the previous owner had moved out, Niki decided to paint several rooms and do a deep clean before moving in. She wisely pointed out, “Painting and cleaning is so much easier to do when you don’t have to move furniture.”

My daughter is the family painter, so when she began refurbishing the new house, I went there to prune trees and shrubs for her. Lilacs from the civil war era were ripping holes in window screens, scratching the porch roof, poking at eaves-troughs and rubbing against the siding. I nipped off what I could and used my hack saw to cut bigger branches.

I accomplished only about five percent of the trimming that needed to be done. The job was too big for me. That night I spoke to my big sister Agnes on the phone. Her response when I described my dilemma, was, “Kathy, you know I have a lady’s chainsaw. …And I know how to use it!”

My sister accompanied me on my next visit to Niki’s new house. We lifted her battery operated chainsaw out of the trunk and cut down a big branch that I had only been able to top. The small, sharp chain sliced through the wood as though it was soft butter!

Looking around at the yard, I pointed out, “See those pine trees in the center of the circle drive? Niki wants them cut down. I told her they would look nice if they were under-brushed. Let’s see what we can do with the first tree.”

For the next hour we cut away long scraggly branches that were half-dead. Huge false elder plants had woven themselves into the trees as high as the second story of the nearby house. The diameter of some of the false elder trunks were larger than the pine branches, but the wood was soft and cut easily. When we finished, we stepped back and admired our work. What a huge difference it made to have those branches gone!

There were three more pine trees nearby that badly needed the same treatment. And I knew one thing for sure, I wasn’t going to use a hack saw to chop off hundreds of branches to finish this job.

The next time I headed over to work in Niki’s new yard, I stopped by a store that sells chainsaws. I went in and told the salesman, “My sister has a lady’s chainsaw. It works great. Now I want one.” Half an hour later I walked out with a Stihl chainsaw in my hands.

The salesman saw me to the car, saying, “You be careful with that now, OK?”

Being able to easily cut off branches is wonderful, but I fully realize that my new ‘toy’ is very dangerous. I plan on being careful.

When I told someone that I’d bought myself a chainsaw, it amused me how startled that person looked. I guess the thought of a chainsaw-totting granny is kind of scary.