Jonathan Moeller vs compost!

I’m pleased to report that I made more progress than I expected on SILENT ORDER: RUST HAND this week – I am now 66 percent through the book.

The reason for that was a tree.

I have quite a few Homeowner Maintenance Mandatory Fun Activities (funtivities!) to do, and I tried to pack a bunch of them into the end of July so I could get through them and get back to working on DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS.

One of my Mandatory Funtivities, however, involves tree trimming. A tree in the yard has gotten overgrown with a lot of branches on ground level, and it was becoming a bit of a hazard. I wanted to call the tree trimmers to deal with it, but I live in a part of the world where the trees outnumber the people exponentially, and the tree trimmers are backed up for months, if they get to you at all.

But then I thought, the tree is healthy, all the branches I need to get down are at ground level, I can buy a chain saw and do it myself.

I was, of course, fully aware that many stories that begin with “I can buy a chain saw and do it myself” end in varying degrees of disaster ranging from comical to ruinous and sometimes both.

So I got an electric pole saw (this is a small electric chainsaw that attaches to the end of a metal pole for tree trimming), thoroughly read all the instructions and safety materials, and then booked off all July 27th for tree trimming since I had never done it before and therefore wanted to proceed slowly and carefully.

Turns out, if you follow all suggested safety precautions and adequately oil the chain saw, using a polesaw is really easy. It just goes WHHHRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! and slices right through the branch, and that’s that.

The tricky part turned out to be what to do with the branches once I got them down. The local compost center is only open twice a week, and I hadn’t realized that freshly cut tree branches don’t compress down very well, even if you chop them up into smaller pieces. I rapidly ran out of places to store the branches, and I couldn’t get rid of them since the compost center wasn’t open for another two days. I realized that tree trimming would be have to be something I would do in small pieces over a week or so, rather than a “one and done” all day job. That meant I had to stop after two and a half hours after I thought it would take all day, so I wrote 5,500 words of SILENT ORDER: RUST HAND instead of tree trimming.

Thankfully, all the big “all-day jobs” of my Homeowner Funtivities are done, and what’s left are things I’ll have to do in phases, an hour or two every day. That means my writing pace can pick up again, so hopefully it won’t be too much longer until the rough draft of SILENT ORDER: RUST HAND is finished.

Finally, I should mention once again that if you do use a polesaw or any power tool of any sort, you should definitely abide by all the manufacturer’s recommended safety precautions and procedures.

-JM