In my front yard, there are two huge trees. With the sunny Texas weather, nature grows so fast. While that sounds nice, it is not nice to have the trees overgrown. One huge issue is it can overhang to your roof and rats, yes rats, can climb the tree and enter your house. Rats in the attic is a common issue in Texas. It has happened to me and I will do another post some other time about how I got rid of them.
Every year I have to trim these trees and trim a lot! When I first moved into this house 4 years ago, the trees were out of control. The previous owners severely neglected the yard and lawn. Unfortunately the first 2 years of my living there, I did the same thing. I was very busy with work and just let everything grow unchecked. This was my first time owning a house and I did not realize there was so much work.
One thing to consider when trimming the trees is safety. It can be misleading how heavy a branch is. I got hit by a small looking branch and it hurt a bunch. The worst part of my day was when I got tired of holding the pole saw and tried to take a shortcut in cutting a large branch. Instead of using the proper 3-cut technique, I tried to cut it with 1 cut and got my pole saw stuck.
3-cut method: For very large limbs, take 3 steps for safe removal using a saw. Go out about a foot or two from the main trunk and cut upwards through the bark. Then make the second cut from the top down to intersect with the lower cut. This will remove most of the weight from the end of the branch. and stop the peeling of the bark @ Cut 1.
Then I proceeded to be even more stupid and tried to forcefully yank my pole saw free. Abiding by Newton’s 3rd law (action-reaction), I yanked the saw free but then fell off the ladder about 10 feet. I fell onto my side onto the grass, fortunately, and didn’t hit my head. But I also hit my left shoulder hard and elbow and got some minor skin scrapes. My main concern is my left shoulder because most of the fall landed on the shoulder. I know that ligaments heal a lot slower than muscle and the injured shoulder can be a pain, literally, to heal. After a 24 hour evaluation, I can say I’m just happy I didn’t break my shoulder. It definitely feels strained and a bit in pain. I will have to ice it and let my body heal. Hopefully in 2-4 weeks, it will be back to working order. Overall, I’m still alive! For everyone interested in DIY pruning your tree, please, please be careful and plan ahead!
