I ran a quick errand to Home Depot on Thursday, Boy is growing vegetables in the backyard and his tomato plants are getting big and heavy enough that he needs to support them with some structure. He asked if I would go buy him some stakes which I said sure, because I am ultra bored of being home and I was going to go anyway. We have to maintain our yard and we were out of line for our weed trimmer. I prefer going to Lowe's nowadays, but our trimmer is a cheapie brand from Home Depot and Lowe's does not carry replacement line cartridges that are pre-filled. This is mostly why I chose to go to Home Depot and also it is a little bit closer to home and I just charged the dryer to the Lowe's credit card, I don't want to get out of hand and charge more stuff and let it get out of hand because I do love getting me some tools.
Sure enough, while getting the line for the trimmer, I noticed the little electric saws on extend-a-poles and I got it in my head that I needed one. About a month ago, I cut about half of the dead palm leaves hanging down 1 of our palm trees. These trees have really taken off and the are at least as tall as our two story house, so reaching all the way up is going to be a pain in the butt, but anyways, I could only cut the palm leaf from its branch at the skinny point where the lead opens up. As the branch goes toward the trunk, they get very wide and my pole saw just wouldn't handle it. I was using the back part of the pole saw that just lops off up to about an inch thick branch and even that left me sore the next day.
Enter DD, our new tenant, who unlike Boy, loves doing manual labor, Wife and I were telling him about us wanting to clean up the trees while we were outside grilling and he offered to do it, but he was talking about getting spikes for his boots to climb the palm tree and it sounded more difficult than I care to get involved in. I figure if I buy this electric saw, which extends 9 feet and then our roughly 7 feet reach already gets us to 16 feet off the ground without climbing a ladder and that should go a good ways to getting the job done. DD did clean up our tree in the front of the house a couple years ago when he first lived with us and he was talking about doing it again. He was talking about the tree in the front, now that it too was as tall as the house, we should cut all the branches below ten feet to reduce the weight of the tree, making it stronger in a wind storm. I like that kind of thinking, he said he worked with someone who did that kind of work for awhile, so it sounded good.
At least now I have the saw to do all this from the safety of the ground. I chose the electric one because it was $99. They had a battery powered one that was almost identical, but the battery and charger were to be bought separate. First, I am unsure if battery power is enough to handle cutting tree branches, second, the tool itself was $120 and then the batteries they had were at least $59. I would have paid almost twice more to be free of cords when I already have a 100ft cord and electric outlets in front and back of the house, so I went the cheap route. If I knew I would be out cutting branches for other people and making money, I might have bought the battery powered version. Another thing that bother me is that I have an old battery powered trimmer that was great, but I now have four old batteries and neither of them really holds much charge anymore, and I am not sure the technology has improved that much.
As far as the saw goes, this is the second one I have bought. I had another one when we lived in the other house. I don't know if I lent it out or if it is in the garage hidden somewhere, but I could not find it and since we have been in this house since 2007, the other saw would be 15 years old or so. So even if Wife wants to bust balls and say I don't need one, I have one at the house, I just ignore her sometimes and do what must be done. What is $100?
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