Saturday we had tree trimmers here all day removing this lovely tree...
... because of this ...
Yep, those are the cable line and power lines to our house running right through the center of our tree. Not to mention it is by far the tallest tree on our block.. possibly the neighborhood.
So, we debated a long time over whether to trim or remove this tree. As much as we love the shade it provides in the summer, there are so many more cons to keeping it.
The 30-60 mph winds make us nervous because the tree could fall on to our house or branches could break off snapping power lines. The branches the do fall in the wind {which is A LOT} have nice sharp thorns on them making it a literal pain to pick them all up.
Plus, the trunk at the base of the tree where the big branches split has a large split in it. If we simply trimmed the tree it would require cables being put through the tree branches in various places to keep it all from cracking all the way through.
So, after some debate we decided to just take the whole thing out, including grinding up the stump. This leaves us so many options for moving our garden around and potentially getting a play set at some point with swings and slide.
Saturday morning they showed up to start work! But not before I snapped one last picture.
There was one guy who worked in the tree and one on the ground. They one in the tree made it look so easy to just climb right up. With his chainsaw he made easy work of some of the big branches.
The guy on the ground worked to clean up the mess and keep the falling branches from hitting the power lines.
They had to "borrow" the neighbors gazebo to get to some of the branches.
After about 6 hours or so this is how the backyard looked.
Nice pile of large logs... too bad we don't have a fire place!!
This is a view from the very bottom of the trunk -- down near the ground. Turns out the crack in the tree where the branches split ran the entire length of the trunk... confirming our decision to remove the whole thing!
Once the stump was ground up, we were left with a hole and a pile of sawdust! Perfect for exploring.
They had to leave for the day, and left a HUGE pile of logs in our driveway for the rest of the weekend. {They came back Monday and got them} We tried counting rings on the big trunk slices, but it was difficult. Made for a great science lesson for the kids though! ♥
Also made a great picture spot... if only the sun wasn't in his eyes.
Though it was a day of semi-inconvenience, our backyard looks much larger and we can rest easy that we will still have power to our house in the wind storms!
Now to decide where to move our garden....
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