We’re knocking out the chores here at Marshmallow Ranch. When I moved to Mr. FixIt’s place in November of 2017, there was a maple sapling in the flower bed in front of the kitchen window. It wasn’t very big…maybe an inch or a little more diameter. I kinda liked it because the birds would swoop in and then on the feeder. And in the fall, the leaves turned yellow…like aspen trees in Colorado.

Fast forward five years and that sucker had grown higher than the house with a trunk at least six inches across. There are also three cedar trees out there. All of them are beginning to hang over and make contact with the roof over the family room and that’s creating a problem. They’re just way too close to the house so they have to go.

We don’t do a huge amount of arboreal work, but from time to time, we need to take something out. When we ran across a deal on a small 14” electric chainsaw, we figured that would be good enough for the kinds of projects we have around here. A large tree limb fell at our rental house this spring so we had to cut that up. Later in the summer, another one came down and we used it again.

This was the first time we’ve really used this chainsaw here at home and we faced a couple of issues. First, maple is fairly hard wood. It took a LOT of cutting to get it to the point of coming down. And second, the chain had gotten dull and it made the job a lot harder than it should have been.

When I was a young wife and mother and lived in the mountains of Colorado, our log home was on two acres a few miles out of town. We cut and split our own firewood because we were poor. I used a huge Stihl saw that made quick work of the soft woods we were cutting. As I worked away on that maple with that teeny tiny little toy chainsaw yesterday, I was getting frustrated because I know what a BIG rig can do. 

I suggested we go rent a real chainsaw. My sweet Mr. FixIt reminded me we have a chainsaw…it’s right here…and all we need is a new chain. He’s right of course. I was just hot and tired and frustrated and wanted the job done as fast as possible. Instead, we ran to town, bought TWO replacement chains, then got dinner and sat by the river watching the sunset. 

I may not have won the Great Chainsaw Debate…but I won a nice evening and a nice meal with a nice view and my BEST GUY. That trumps any ol’ chainsaw, any ol’ time!

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““For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease.”

Job 14:7 ESV