Working on the basis that you can prune anything in late June, and certainly cherries, I prevailed upon the Systems Administrator to come and remove a substantial branch from the wild gean, which was obscuring the Parrotia persica. I'd like to remove some of the higher branches as well where they are crowding the end one of the trio of birches, but that would require the Henchman, if not the scaffolding platform, and I thought that getting rid of the cross branch was a start, and would let some more light into the ditch bed. The SA duly ran out two reels of cable and plugged in the electric chainsaw.
The first cut removed the end of the branch, which I caught before it could land on any of my shrubs. The second cut took off a further section, which landed on the winter flowering honeysuckle before I could reach it, but fortunately the honeysuckle had a tough and elastic constitution, and did not break. That still left a large amount of branch, including a side branch which ran back across a patch of ornamental Rubus and a second one growing vertically upwards. Neither were at all easy to remove, since the SA would have to stand in the middle of a large shrub to reach them. The SA proposed taking off another piece of the main branch with both side branches still attached. I objected that there was a lot of weight in there, thinking principally of my shrubs, but the SA said it wasn't too bad. I crawled to the back of the bed ready to try and break the fall.
The chainsaw got most of the way through and stuck. With hindsight it would have been sensible of the SA to do an undercut, or take more time over it and work out how to get at the side branches to take more weight out of it before cutting the main branch, but there you go. The SA asked if I could reach the branch, to pull it back and get it off the saw. I could reach it, just, but couldn't do much to free the saw, which the SA eventually wrenched loose. The final cut took the branch off, and dislodged the chain from the saw.
Getting the chain back on a chain saw is an infuriating task, which even with two people seems to require more hands than you have between you. I used both hands to hold the chain on its guide bar, while the SA tried to feed the chain back on the saw and tension it. This left no hands over to hold the body of the saw, which kept moving as I was applying tension to it while the SA was applying pressure. We gave up trying to do the job with the saw resting on the edge of the trailer, trooped back up to the top of the garden and stood it on a low wall, eventually wedging it against the retaining wall behind, which just about kept it still. The chain cover wouldn't do up, and the SA discovered I had the guide bar the wrong way up. The clue is in the word BOSCH written down the side, which should not be upside down. Eventually the saw went back together and we trotted back to the bottom of the garden. The saw made nasty rattling noises when started. The SA inspected it and pronounced that the chain was buggered, and a link must have got twisted when it was stuck in the tree.
That halted proceedings for the day. A new chain will cost around twenty quid, which means that this afternoon's partial pruning job cost approximately seven quid a cut.
I don't like power tools. I can see that they make relatively fast and light work of what would otherwise require days of brute physical toil, and I have seen saw pits and can imagine quite how arduous sawing wood was, and how unpleasant for the bottom dog down in the pit. I know that using an electric screwdriver to assemble our decking saved the SA an immense amount of work, which would probably have ended in an acute case of tendonitis long before the decks were complete. But chain saws are so annoying, with their ability to bind and break, and the noise. I think I might buy myself a bow saw, so that I can remove small to medium branches myself, without recourse to the SA and mechanical aids.
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