T-Day TIMBER!

When you live in a vintage home, the trees become vintage, too, and after 75 years start to die.  That is what happened to five sweet gum trees surrounding the house.

When half of one tree fell on the roof and crushed my copper gutters in the courtyard during Hurricane Michael, we had to get serious about getting these down before the winter winds start.  I have to say, I think the house looks much better with them gone, and in their place I will plant Black Dragon Kryptomeria conifers to flank the front of the house.

For over six months we have had three different tree guys here to give us an estimate and all were supposed to come and never showed, never returned a call.  The same happened with this group, and when they said they could do it on Thanksgiving day, we called their bluff and told them to come on over!

To our surprise, they showed up!  We had four huge trees taken down and one huge one that fell last year was cut up, and we could finally fix the fence.  We still have three to go, and they should be back in a week or so with the splitter so we can stack our wood in the wood shed.  Can't wait!

It was amazing to see how fast they can take down a tree.  The chain saws go through them like butter, they had a huge chipper that took care of all the branches and one guy climbed up each tree to get the limbs. They were only here four hours and it only cost $700~

Now that we also have the wood stove in the boathouse and guests that we have to supply wood to, this will come in handy and it's only the beginning!

I wanted to leave a lot of limbs on this one and take the chance on it falling since it is the only tree now close enough to my bird feeders to hold the suet, but they convinced me it had to be cut back to this, and I don't like the look at all, but the pileated was here this morning for his suet, so if it doesn't bother him, it doesn't bother me!

We had guests coming and going the whole Thanksgiving weekend, so with that and the trees, T-Day was just another work day.  

 I didn't even get my Christmas tree up this weekend as I normally do, but I did manage to get the paper lanterns down and put up snowflakes and icicles in the boathouse to make it festive.

Thank goodness I found another mink plush. Even with the wood stove, it is chilly, but no guests have complained yet.

Hoping this week to get my mantle dressed for Christmas and the tree up, maybe get some cleaning done?  We don't have guests until the weekend, so hoping to get some things accomplished since I'm way behind.