... and with the new morning after the gusty winds, it was time to take a walk around the house to see what other things had fallen. Yesterday, we had two large wattle stems that had fallen. One was no danger and fell to the ground.. and the other, well... it didn't fall cleanly, and it was within striking distance of our bedroom window.. and so the arborist dealt with that on his way back home.

And there was this one medium sized gumtree branch that had snapped high up... but not cleanly, and it was leaning against the darker tree in the front of the photo. This I would need to deal with as soon as possible, as it was liable to fall into a road intersection or onto parked cars (our students often park here... ).

But other than that, there was only debris (sticks and leaves) and some old larger debris that had gotten caught and were shaken loose by the winds. So, thankfully nothing major... although, you never really know if something has been weakened just enough...

Anyway, this was the tip end of the branch that I was going to deal with. This end was quite light and leafy... no problem, however, the part that was higher up was significantly thicker and heavier, and if it levered onto a car below... well, it wouldn't crush it, but there was be some damage!

I did tug it around by hand to see if it would come loose easily, but despite some promising cracking sounds... it ended up being mostly supported by a thin fork in the dark tree.

And so it was time to break out the chainsaw on a stick! This was a new (second-hand) one without a harness... so I practiced on the wattles first to get a hang of cutting and balancing the weight (I'm a little guy...). I did also notice that it used a much more powerful battery than the original one that we had... so, it was a good deal stronger at cutting!

This was one of my first attempts to do a cut... I was starting to learn the importance of the undercuts to make sure that the blade wouldn't get caught. So, lots of levelling up today! And with the more powerful battery, the teeth weren't getting stuck due to lack of power either!

And after asking my wife to watch for the traffic... I attacked that little fork, and as the damaged section suddenly bore the full weight of the branch, it snapped off! Thankfully not on me... but it did land pretty damn close!

And then the rest of the morning was spent sawing up all the fallen branches (plus the thicker and longer wattles...) into manageable chunks. Either for the green waste (small logs...) and everything else for the thinner maw of the shredder to make some mulch.

At the end of the morning, my left arm was quite sore from supporting so much weight at a distance. I am definitely going to start saving up to buy a handheld small battery chainsaw.

Later in the day, I was trying to practice... but my arm was too tired to hold up and have my fingers move quickly enough, so I gave up on that! For the violin, if you have tension in your arm, your fingers are much less agile!

Handy Crypto Tools

Ledger Nano S/X: Keep your crypto safe and offline with the leading hardware wallet provider. Not your keys, not your crypto!
Coinbase Wallet: Multi chain wallet with lots of opportunities to Learn and Earn!
Binance: My first choice of centralised exchange, featuring a wide variety of crypto and savings products.
WooX: The centralised version of WooFi. Stake WOO for fee-free trades and free withdrawals! This link also gives you back 25% of the commission.
GMX.io: Decentralised perpetual futures trading on Arbitrum!
Coinbase: If you need a regulated and safe environment to trade, this is the first exchange for most newcomers!
Crypto.com: Mixed feelings, but they have the BEST looking VISA debit card in existence! Seriously, it is beautiful!
CoinList: Access to early investor and crowdsale of vetted and reserached projects.
Cointracking: Automated or manual tracking of crypto for accounting and taxation reports.
KuCoin: I still use this exchange to take part in the Spotlight and Burning Drop launches.
MEXC: Accepts HIVE, and trades in most poopcoins! Join the casino!
ByBit: Leverage and spot trading, next Binance?
OkX: Again, another Binance contender?