{"id":9091,"date":"2016-09-04T20:54:03","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T00:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=9091"},"modified":"2017-04-20T11:49:34","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T15:49:34","slug":"lop-lop-loppers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=9091","title":{"rendered":"Lop lop loppers"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the drive\u00a0in Friday, Tom flinched every time a branch scraped against Xena on Booger Hollow’s narrow and rhododendron-infested roads. So today, I got out the loppers to trim them back.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a three-hour chore. But the destructive beast inside me was growling with delight to be off the leash.<\/span><\/p>\n

Loppers were unfamiliar to me until about five years ago. I learned that if you need to clear trails and roads in forest on a regular basis, loppers are your best friend.<\/span><\/p>\n

You use them to lop off those pesky branches that get in your way. You can even cut down small trees with a decent pair of loppers. They\u00a0are like pruning shears on steroids that have mated with handgun.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Because of the way loppers are designed and constructed, you don’t need a lot of strength to operate them. The cutting edge is powered by a kind of gear, which operates on the strength of the levered handles. (Don’t remember geometry? Here’s a refresher on how a lever works<\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

I love my loppers. Those things are amazing. And addicting.<\/span><\/p>\n

When you can just snap off a healthy branch as thick as your finger in a half-second, you get a little power rush. And you do it again and again.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"loppers<\/p>\n

Last year we bought a bigger pair of loppers but I didn’t have the chance to put them to work. Today was the test.<\/span><\/p>\n

Quickly learned that I could cut down a tree with a trunk as big around as my wrist. Somehow this is even more satisfying than a chainsaw, because you have the illusion that you are winning by your own power alone, not because you belong to a species that invented a gasoline-powered engine and a blade that runs a chain full of sharp little axes at high speed.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is way better than breaking glass<\/a>, because the branches can just decompose where they fall.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I cut, and cut, and cut, all the way down the quarter-mile Booger Hollow Road. Then I walked the road back and cut more along the way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wanton destruction. I snipped off and tossed branches aside without speaking to the plants. I muttered like some grizzled old-timer about Laurel Hell<\/a> and nasty rhodies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If a branch got too close to my head, I reached up with those loppers and just snapped it off. Raw power.<\/span><\/p>\n

Makes you understand why barbers like to cut your hair too short.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 2015, the year I bought the new and bigger loppers.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the drive\u00a0in Friday, Tom flinched every time a branch scraped against Xena on Booger Hollow’s narrow and rhododendron-infested roads. So today, I got out the loppers to trim them back. It was a three-hour chore. But the destructive beast inside me was growling with delight to be off the leash. Loppers were unfamiliar to … read more Lop lop loppers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[67,220,500,38,179,180],"class_list":["post-9091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tress","tag-67","tag-booger-hollow","tag-forest","tag-maintenance","tag-nature","tag-trees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9091"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9097,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9091\/revisions\/9097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}