Does trimming my ginormous cedar hedge count as woodworking?

[Owen Lawrence]

It's getting too expensive to pay those guys that come once a year to trim my hedge. My first session this month finished one side of one of the pair of hedges, and finished my arms, too. Now, two sessions later, recovered and getting stronger, I have finished two thirds of one half of one top, perched at the end of a ladder the whole time.

Aside from all the schemes of hedge trimming robots and trimmer swinging gantries, I'm up there thinking, "Could this eight foot wide (min.) flat top support me and a sheet of plywood while I sit up there trimming the next landing spot for the sheet?" Also, "Could I cut four feet off the top of each tree and expect the top to ever fill in again?" Some of the branches are already beginning to exceed the capacity of my trimmer (a "Hedge Hog").

BTW, I live in Ottawa, Ontario, if that makes any difference. Thanks for letting me vent, if nothing else.

- Owen -

[RicodJour]

Be careful. Don't Bob Ojeda yourself.

R

[Dhakala]

Consider purchasing a giraffe. They are Africa's native tree trimmers.

[C & E]

Hey Rick, helps us out on the Ojeda reference. I'm only finding a Mets pitcher and a trumper player in my search. Nothing pointing to a tragic gardening accident.

[C & E]

I managed to find the Ojida reference. Apologies for being slow. Although he wasn't killed, others were. Here it is;

People Weekly Magazine

5 April 1993 Vol. 39 No. 13 Pages 45 and 46 By William Plummer and Don Sider with additional reporting by Cindy Dampier, Johnny Dodd, and Ken Myers In the gathering gloom, Bob Feller, the greatest pitcher Cleveland has ever known, stood by the Florida lake and stared out at the long pier, as if trying to commit it to memory. "I'll have to tell people back home about where these young men ended their lives," said Feller, 74. "I wand to have the correct answers." Everybody in the game was searching for those answers last week in the wake of major league baseball's first fatalities since 1979, when Yankees' Thurman Munson crashed his Cessna Citation in Akron. On March 22, Cleveland pitchers Steve Olin, Tim Crews, and Bob Ojeda, out after dark on Clermont's Little Lake Nellie in Crews's 18-foot bass boat, hurled into the wooden pier at as much as 60 m.p.h. Olin, 27, the Indians top reliever, was killed instantly, Crews, 31, died of injuries the next morning at Orlando Regional Medical Center, Ojeda, 35, who suffered lacerations on the head, was spared and may soon be released from the hospital. Baseball's spring training, a time of hope and renewal for fans everywhere, was suddenly blighted with grief.

[RicodJour]

Ojeda lived under a black cloud it seems. That wasn't the accident I was referring to.

"He came back strong in 1988, but pitched with poor support and finished 10-13 despite a 2.88 ERA. In a well-documented freak accident, he missed the last three weeks of the season after severing his left middle finger while trimming the hedge at his home. The tip of the finger was deliberately re-attached crookedly; he lost feeling and strength in it, but the different angle was designed to help him continue to throw his curveball."

Ouch.

R

[Al]

May sound strange but I use my pickup, had my son move it slowly as we went along the hedge I did that for the 9 years we lived at that place.. Made it easy and quick to heck with ladders.. lol tie a rope to ya and the truck lean over the side and there ya go! (everyone has a little redneck in them!) Ofcoarse I had the room on both sides of the hedge to do this.

Lol gfl on that I would not try it.

IMHO

Al