Down Go The Trees

Last year we noticed the neighbor had a tree that had turned brown and died...and then decided to invite itself to Thanksgiving. Over the summer all the trees in the line took a turn for the worse. We had lots of people come out for advice and estimates - arborists, tree surgeons and the like. But most everyone agreed, our eight giant cedars should come down before storm season, when they might decide to go AWOL on their own.

The boys were a bit annoyed that they had to go to school instead of staying home to watch the show. After all, Dad took a day off. But I promised pictures and video...


The crew showed up bright and early. The first tree came down while I was running Grace to preschool. After that I was cursing my camera lens and trying to capture everything with the telephoto lens. I really need to get the camera looked at.

One member of the three-man crew climbed to the top of a tree, tied the top of another tree to a pulley system, then took it down in managable pieces. They we able to swing the tops of the neighbors trees into our yard the same way. It was fascinating to watch him move from tree to tree. I knew he was harnessed and safe, but I couldn't stop watching. Kind of like cirque du soliel with chansaws.

The crew on the ground sliced the limbs off and fed them into the chipper. Seeing the tops of some of the trees so dead really helped hammer home that it was time to take them down.

Once the trunks were limbed, they sliced them into pieces that we can spilt for firewood. Sometimes they didn't have another tree to rig it off of, so they took the tree down in chunks.

The last bit was felled into the yard with a might thunk. One missed the logs it was supposed to fall unto and left quite the divot in the lawn. No big worry, since we'll have to redo the whole backyard landscaping this summer.

The kids loved climbing over the wood piles...until they learned they'd have to help move it all to the side yard.

The next week a different team came to grind the stumps. They were supposed to grind them one foot below the soil. But we have no idea if this is true. The process left us with a massive pile of sawdust.

The sawdust is a lower priority than getting the wood off the lawn, split, and stacked. Bayley was thrilled to earn the first few bucks moving logs. But the joy soon wore off and he had to be bribed to move the last pile.

One thing we didn't expect - the bugs! All the bugs that lived in the trees, including the ones that caused the tree to die, needed to find new homes so they were all over the backyard that first day. GROSS!