I pruned one of the lilac bushes in the back yard two weeks ago but I didn’t do anything with the branches I pruned off the bush because I didn’t have the time then. They’ve been sitting in the back yard for two weeks until today when I finally ran them through the wood chipper. Is it procrastination if I put it off until I had time to do it? I wonder.

What I really went out in the yard to do today was prune another one of the lilac bushes, but I knew that I should take care of those other branches first or I’d have an even bigger pile of branches in the yard reminding me what a slacker I am, so I got the wood chipper out of the shed, cranked it up and tried running the first branch through it. The chipper’s got a pair of blades on a spinning plate that chews up any stick you shove in there. Normally it’ll chip branches as fast as I can feed them in, but this time the stick went in and stopped against the plate. I leaned into it a bit but it still wouldn’t go, so I leaned against it with nearly all my weight. Nothing. Not one single wood chip came out of the chute.

I took the chipper apart to see if I could figure out what the matter was. The problem turned out to be pretty simple: The blades were dull as a butter knife. Really, most butter knives that I’ve used were sharper than those blades were. They weren’t just blunt, they were obtuse. The branches weren’t getting chipped because the worst those blades could do was slap them in a rather limp-wristed way. So I had to break out the tools to unscrew the blades, which always results in skinned knuckles, and then take them downstairs to grind them on a wheel until they were sharp again. At least that part’s fun. Lots of noise and sparks. After they were sharp again, I took them back outside, screwed them back in place and put the chipper back together. Twenty minutes after I wheeled the wood chipper out of the shed, I was finally getting around to chipping some wood. Hally-fucken-looyah.

As I started chipping the pile of branches from the lilac bush, My Darling B happened by with a couple baskets filled with leaves, twigs and dried-out raspberry canes and asked me to mulch those, too. I said sure, leave them here, I’ll take care of them, because what else was I going to say?

It was a lot warmer outside than I thought it was when I first started. My shirt was drenched in sweat by the time I finished chipping and mulching and otherwise demolishing the pile of branches, twigs and leaves that were heaped up around me. I’d been standing outside in the heat and sun for about an hour and a half, which is more standing than I normally ever do at any time during a typical day, so I thought it might be a good idea to hydrate. I went inside where it was cool, filled a big glass with cold water and sucked it down while I flipped through messages on Twitter. Nothing like reading public texts from the general public to make me feel better about my boring life.

Then it was back outside to start pruning branches off one of the lilac bushes in the front yard — the thing I went into the yard to do in the first place! I cut about a half-dozen thickly-leafed branches, dragged them to the back yard and cut each branch up into bits that would easily fit into the chipper. The directions that came with the chipper tell me that I’m not supposed to stick branches into it that are much more than a half-inch thick, but I’ve successfully chipped branches twice that big. I figure if I can get it into the chute, which is about an inch and a quarter wide, then it’s fair game. I chipped just about all but the thickest butt-ends of the branches I trimmed off the lilac bush, and finished just in time to beat the downpour that soaked My Darling B as she was hurrying to plant her sweet potatoes.