I got my PC back this week.  Yeah!   What?  You didn’t notice that I’ve been unreliable and inconsistent over the last month?  You’ve had your own stuff going on?  Excellent!

Anyways, besides trying to get back online, we’ve had another drama around these parts.  It started a while back, when we lost a limb down in our driveway.  The hubs and I had to wrestle this one out of the way so we could get our cars out to work that morning. It looks fluffy, but it wasn’t light, trust me.

Then two weeks ago, on a completely calm and weather-less night, we heard two loud cracks and an enormous thud at about 11 PM.  I knew we didn’t take a direct hit because there were no leaves poking through the bedroom ceiling.  I would have seen them.  Instead, we saw this in the neighbor’s yard the next morning.

All that was left of this scraggly but humongous tree was one lonely “lead” or main trunk, stretching way up into the sky, and leaning decidedly over our neighbor’s house.  Most of the foliage you see if actually from the tree in the background.  Ours looks rather DrSeuss-ish.

Within a week we had an appointment to remove the beast.  This post is for you, in case you have to have a monstrous, decades old tree removed.  Don’t stress, because you’ll know exactly how the pros do it.

1.  Be sure to get written estimates and proof of insurance from all of your bidders.  Not sure how to hire contractors?  Use my how to hire contractors cheat sheet.  We ended up working with SavATree, again.  I’m getting to like these guys.

2.  On the appointed day, they showed up with all of their fun toys.  If you have boys, this is where you’ll want to pop some popcorn and set them up for a show.  They bring some really fun trucks, starting with the bucket truck.

Even my girls were into it…for a little while.

3.  They start by pruning off the limbs.  We had precious few of those left, so the tree was down to one naked trunk in less than 15 minutes.  Really.

4.  They used this cute little guy (I mean the truck) to haul out the debris.  Dad always said, the right tool for the job makes all the difference.

5.  They send everything through their shredder.  It sounds awful, but I know the guys just love making that sound.

6. They chopped the trunk down in sections, until it finally looked like this.  This all took just a couple of hours with their crew of 3.

7.  The part that took the longest was grinding the stump.  This step is optional, but well worth it for us to have that real estate back. I was really impressed here with the care the guys took to protect the property with the guards you see in the photo.  The grinder made mulch of the stump, but it took a long time. They basically passed a big grinding wheel (you can see it on the left) back and forth over the same spot for what seemed like hours.

8.  At the end of the project, we were the proud owners of a mound of fresh mulch. Did I tell you how happy this made my husband?  Do all guys just love mulch?

The crew was here nearly the whole day.  I was so glad to have this particular tree out of our lives.  We’re down to two trees- both humongous- on our property, so at some point soon we’ll want to think about succession planning.  For now, I’m just sleeping better during storms knowing we don’t have this monster hanging over our heads.

I hope you enjoyed this post.  It got me thinking about sharing the video of the roof shampoo that we had done two years ago.  Have you ever wondered about that? I’ll work on posting that next week.  If you own a house, you know that you’re never really done decorating, organizing, or maintaining it.  Hopefully you enjoy these little side trips I take you on.

Is there a tree or home maintenance question you are dying to ask?  Have you had a similar tree experience?  Please leave a comment.