Operation Trampoline Rescue (From the Blackberries)

My youngest daughter is turning 18 this weekend (I am

brushing right past this fact quickly cause otherwise I’ll cry), and she asked if we could possibly get the trampoline into a usable state before her party. 

The trampoline, a very expensive and fine Rainbow brand trampoline with a 1,000 pound weight rating and zero springs, was the first recreational object we bought when we moved here. The kids have jumped on it pretty much since they were old enough to jump. 

But it hasn’t been used much in recent years, and the blackberries did what blackberries do to inert items left in one place for too long - they ate it. Not entirely, no. In fact they were mostly confined to the underneath part of the trampoline where we couldn’t mow. But over the years the vines got very tough, thick, and woody, and made it impossible to jump on the trampoline at the risk of doing your self a major injury. Actually, I guess the risk of major injury is kind of intrinsic to trampolines, but y’all know what I mean. 

The trampoline is too heavy to pick up and move. Only the occasional 80 mph wind gusts we get up here can do that. As proof against just that, several years ago we pounded some fence stakes into the ground and chained the trampoline down, so it’s EXTRA immovable. And of course it was also lassoed and tied to the earth by innumerable blackberry vines. Moving the trampoline to mow underneath it wasn’t an option. 

Papa to the rescue. I suggested using  the forklift to lift one side of it but he said the forklift needs to be on concrete or it will just tip over or sink into the ground. But he said the tow truck would work. And it did. Once he used the truck to pry the trampoline up on an angle, it was pretty easy to hold it up there. 

The Stihl has a branch-cutter attachment, so homero basically used a chainsaw on a stick to cut all the gnarly canes underneath while Paloma and her boyfriend held the trampoline up. Then Paloma went underneath with a rake and pulled out the cut vines, and I gathered them up with gloves on and put them in the wheelbarrow and hauled them over to the compost. 

It was about an hour’s work for four people. Some of the vines had grown through the net and had to be carefully cut from both sides and extricated, but we got it done. The trampoline is back in action.