I hesitate to say it, but I think spring has finally arrived.
Our last snowfall came less than two weeks ago though (on May 3rd), and that was preceded by almost a week of warm (around 70 degree) weather. Before the last snow we were led to believe spring had arrived, but then Old Man Winter hit us again.
We’ve since only had a couple of weeks of warmer weather again and considering the way winter has been lingering this year, it’s certainly not impossible that we might get more snow (but I am going to venture pretty unlikely). Only a few days ago daytime highs struggled to reach the mid 40′s again and the nighttime lows approached freezing, so it was certainly possible for us to have had more snow. But after a few days it started warming up again.
Then, demonstrating that our rollercoaster weather ride continues, less than two weeks after our last snowstorm the area set records for high temperatures (my weather station showed a high of 95.5 degrees)!
Regardless last week I finally took the tire chains off the tractor. I also turned off the electric heater that I had running in the new building radiant heat temporary enclosure since I found I had frozen part of the system in late January.
The late spring has messed up this weekend’s fishing opener in Minnesota, since many of the lakes up north are still partially frozen. A video of the ice being blown off Lake Mille Lacs into resort homes is pretty amazing (although the person who shot the video needs to learn how to properly orient their cell phone camera when shooting video).
Apparently ice being blown off Mille Lacs in the spring this way isn’t that uncommon, but this was an extreme example of the phenomenon.
Just this week it had finally dried out enough to start working on some outdoor projects, and I slowly started getting back to it.
One of my spring projects is to remove a tree just northwest of the house. It’s starting to grow over the house and four season porch, and I want to start removing it before it gets too many leaves on it.
We planted a tree to replace it years ago and I think the newer tree is getting shaded by the older tree as well which is stunting the new tree’s growth. (The new tree is to the right in the first photo.)
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
The removal is going to have to be done so that I don’t drop any large branches on the house and/or gutters (or the other adjacent tree that’s replacing it). A fair amount of the branches lean toward the yard (away from the house) and removing those parts will be easy. It’s the parts that lean towards and over the house that I’ll have to remove carefully.
Unfortunately from the looks of it the tree doesn’t have any substantial crooks high enough that I can put my tree climbing rope over. So it’s going to be a challenge getting high enough in the tree to remove the branches from the top in smaller sections to keep them from dropping onto the house.
I’m decided that I’m probably going to have to use my tractor work platform for at least some of the work.
Image may be NSFW.
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I’ve been thinking of the project for about a month now and even debated about trying to start the work before the snow had gone. When that didn’t happen once it started warming up somewhat it became too muddy to easily get to the tractor scaffolding that’s stored in the new building.
Now that’s it’s dried out I can now get to the scaffolding. In preparation for the project I got out the Hitachi chainsaw I bought last year to be sure it was ready to go. It started right up.
So removing at least part of the tree is likely going to be the big project for this coming weekend.
Last weekend I started collecting all the sticks and branches that had come off the trees during the winter and piling them up. Now our backyard looks like beavers have invaded.
Image may be NSFW.
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I don’t remember ever having as much post-winter debris…
It’s also time to start thinking about putting the electronic insect killers back up. I haven’t seen any mosquitoes yet this year, but they’ll be around soon and with all the snow we had recently it’s wetter than normal so it’s got the potential to be a bad mosquito season this year.
Now that’s it’s dried out it’s also time to start thinking about ordering some building materials for work on the new building. I’ve got some time off soon and since it will be another working vacation and I want to have the materials on hand by then.