Many of my unfortunate tree moments are stemmed from palms
I still remember Dad up the tree cutting one of those cocus palm seed pods - he said that with his luck it would fall on him.
Walked out the front with mum (I was only 4 or 5 at the time) and we hear this "Jesus christ, c*** f***". Turned out he got off the ladder to reposition, and the little bit of bark holding it on let go - it speared the ground about 1ft from his left foot.
Then there was the time I had to fell a strelitzia palm thing (like a giant bird of paradise). I had several directives from Nan - miss the fence, miss the orange tree, miss the shade house, miss the frangipani, miss the arch - which left one way. Got everyone out of the way, and felled it straight as anything down the middle. Look across as it was falling and my dog had wandered down (was quite blind and deaf by that time) thankfully it just missed him.
Or the time she wanted me to get a palm frond off the giant cocus palm - I tied a small brick to the rope and (after getting everyone out of the way) threw it up over the frond - only problem was the rope slingshotted back and hit me with the brick. Other problems with palms include how I have to pull fronds off the shorter one and run like hell with it across the lawn so as not to hit the frangipani below or Nans prized tree dahlia. I forgot to move the sprinker one time - exit one Pope rotary sprinkler
I have been waiting for her to want onions to make a batch of picked onions - on bottle from the last batch she forgot about for a year, tipped them down the back in the thick weeds in the middle of winter - I hit them at approx 8000 rpm with the whipper snipper when I slashed down the weeds - ever tasted year old pickled onions that have been out in the sun a week
