Lumberjack T

(Here is a picture of the tree line that I took back in October 2007)

So, some of you may know that our backyard has a nice line of hedge-apple trees running right through the middle.It gets so shady in the summer, that grass won't grow in one spot, as the sun doesn't get through. Since it rains quite a bit here, we tend to get a nice big mud puddle in that bare spot...especially since our sump pump drains right there as well. While we love the shade, and how it makes our home stay cooler in the summer, there are just too many trees! The kids rarely play in the backyard, since it is either too muddy, too many bugs( chiggers, spiders, ticks, all that yucky stuff), or hazardous from either hedge-apples falling from the trees, or the mysterious golf balls that end up in our yard from the home across the field behind us, that uses their yard as a driving range. Not to mention Tony and Logan saw a snake back there a few weeks ago. Ewww! My dream for the yard is to have a nice tree free patch of lawn, and a nice patio, so we can actually enjoy the backyard. After all, it is one of the things we loved when we bought the house...not so much now that we have to live with it!

This summer Tony decided he would tackle the tree issue himself. He borrowed a chainsaw from his brother Andy, and while I was in California, he went to town. So far he has chopped down 10 trees.That might sound like a lot, but there are still about 23 trees left! We aren't planning on removing all of them, but there are still several we want to do away with.


(Here is a view from our deck. You can tell that the trees have been thinned out from the above picture!)

The other day, Tony needed to climb up into one of the trees to try to get the top half of a tree that was stuck in the other trees and wouldn't come down.It made me very nervous that he was up so high with no harness. Can you find "Waldo?"



Here are some more pictures of the tree mess! I am bummed I didn't get a picture of the HUGE pile of trees that we had to put out by the road when he was done!It took up about half the cul-de-sac!




(The tree on the far left is the one Tony was up in...seriously almost at the top! He is in it in this picture, but I cannot find him.)