Summer Vacation # 2 - The Great Tree Removal Part

 

The trees were one of the reasons I wanted this house.  Fall leaf removal at our last house was unending.  Pine trees seemed like a much better idea.  Pine trees were less work in the fall than deciduous trees, but they have their own issues such as pine needles that carpet the lawn and driveway in a thick golden layer in the fall, pinecones that seem as plentiful as the needles some years, and pine pollen in the spring that easily comes through the window screens coating everything inside and out in a thick, thick yellow dust.  Then there are the falling branches. 

See all those broken branches?  Each one can be as big as a small tree when it falls.  Any good wind or snowstorm meant we would be cutting up and taking a truckload or two to the landfill.  Sometimes the branches just get stuck up there.  I'd be mowing and worrying that it might fall on me.

 

 Multiply this by the five trees which might look spindly in the top photo but were all a couple of feet in diameter.

 

 

 

So the fire truck came.  Yeah, that says fire truck.  This company took recycling to a whole new level--old fire truck reenvisioned for tree removal.

 

Silly me, I thought that the trees would come out and I'd through some dirt down and reseed five spots.  In reality, as each of those big chunks fall, the grass gets torn up.  I should have realized this since it happened every time one of the limbs fell from storms. 

 

After vacuuming the lawn, (Yes, I did vacuum the lawn much to the amusement of the neighbors with a shop vac because there was no way the lawn was going to grow under all the wood chips.)  moving a truckload of topsoil with a wheelbarrow, raking in grass seed, I had this:

 



That's Brian trying to lift some heavy bags of wood chips into the truck.

 

After almost two months of watering because Mother Nature decided it as time for a drought just when I needed some rain:

 



 



Notice that it rained in both these photos.   No rain but a near useless sprinkle or two while I needed to water the lawn. Mother Nature can be a nasty wench.  Fingers are crossed in the hopes that the grass will all come back in the spring.