Man vs Tree

For the longest time I have wanted this pine tree chopped down and carried away. I'm not into pine trees anywhere where I care what is under them and this one just caused too much mess too close to the house, not to mention that the half that was in the shade of our other tree was missing branches and needles; it did not look healthy. It was not a bad tree, just so close to the house that we got a squirrel infestation in our attic which consequently cemented my desire to get rid of the tree. I want a front deck and the tree was not conveniently located for that. I came home last Friday to find my StrongMan at the top of the tree. I had no idea how big the tree was until I saw him at the top of it wielding a hand saw (he later measured and said it was 30 ft tall- yikes!). I waved and smiled my appreciation and then went inside where I wondered which would be left standing, the tree or my StrongMan. I was more than thrilled about all of those safety meetings he has at work about being in high places and needing to be harnessed in, not to mention the gratitude I felt that he was actually wearing the safety gear! It was a huge job and it carried into Saturday also where between soccer games he managed to get the best of the tree. He also cleaned up the humongous mess, which was as sweet to me as the chopping down was! He ended the day with a cozy fire in the backyard with the neighbor kids all clamouring to see how many sticks they could pitch in the fire before StrongMan decided they should stop. All of that and he still took me to Hops by the lake for a late night happy hour! I think my next post will be about him! This is a photo of all of the kids who helped him deal the final blow and pull the thing down safely. I can't take credit for the photo- yep, he even thought to commemorate the event with a photo! (oh, and when I was searching for a blog post idea... he said I should write about the tree, though I think he was only kidding!)