The two dead limbs on the ash tree near out deck (and outside my office window) have been bugging me for years. But they’re too high to reach with my pole saw and I didn’t want to pay the tree guys to come in with their high-lift equipment. So I decided to try a gizmo called a rope saw.”

It’s like a chainsaw chain but with cutting teeth top and bottom. I finally got the thing over my limb but quickly got it stuck. It looked so easy in the videos but this might have been a case of operator error. I finally pulled a big rope over the limb, put the pickup in 4WD, and pulled the partially sawed limb down.

But it wasn’t pretty. I’m going to have another go at cleaning up the stub. To be continued.