Our sad backyard (part 3)

 

We thought last week we would wait a few weeks before tackling the last four trees, but Joseph found out the boom was available to rent this weekend.  He thought these last four would be easier than the first six, but in reality I think they were a lot harder. 

Friday evening Joseph went up in the boom to start cutting on the end tree as it was the biggest and the one we had the most concern about.

 he started by cutting off banches that were just monsterous.  All of them but one came down the way he hoped.  The last one hit our neighbors fence up on the hill.  It only took out a backet that holds the railing to the post. So I was up there cutting off smaller branches so we could swing it back into our yard. He realized that it was going to be impossible for him to do this by himself so he called the Syndergaards and asked for his help again.  Michael was more than happy to come and help us.  We simply could not have done it without him.  We are so grateful he was willing ot give up two Saturdays in a row.  This took alot of hard work. He brought two of his sons to help remove the branches after they fell. 

Starting off the morning.

  We had hoped to use a rope tied to the Durango to help guide the direction the end tree fell, but the plan didn't work. As I pulled away with the Durango the tree went sideways and the rope broke.  The bolts on the tree sheared off.  Thankfully no one was hurt or any damage was done.

 Down to two trees.

 the small brnaches on these trees are so brittle that you could just snap them off.  One branch that came down vertically hit the grould and then snap, snap as all the smaller branches on it literally came off.  All that was left standing was the branch itself.  It was quite the sight to see happen.

Our barren skyline.

This is the last tree.  I took the pitcure from across the street in front of our house. As you can see they were using the extending ladder from the boom to climb up in.

 Just the main trunk left.  What a sad sight to behold. 

 Cutting down the bottom of the stumps

These were just huge and heavy. Joseph took our fence down on Friday so that we could drop the trees without doing anymore damage to the fence.

Our huge pile of small branches. 

 The playhouse took some damage and a few other things will need repairing. We also lost the peach tree next to the playhouse, but it simply couldn't be helped. I will be planting some fruit trees in the near future to replace that and the pear tree.  Along the fence we will just do grapes and hope the fruit trees along the bottom of the fence now have the sun they need to grow like they should.  First priority will be the fence and getting it back up.  We will have a lot of work ahead of us.  Today we are sore and bruised.  My arms took a beating from all the branches we hauled out of the way.  At least we are finished with the worse part. Our backyard that has been such a pleasant oasis has now changed and the privacy we have enjoyed is gone as well. At least we don't have to worry about these monsterous trees coming down in a storm and doing some major damage to the houses around us.  I guess I will be thinking of ways over the winter to do some different landscaping.

trees (part 2)

As soon as Joseph got off of work Friday he left to pick up the 45 foot boom-lift that we had rented.  We thought this would be tall enough, but those trees are alot taller than we realized.  That evening he began to take them down. 

 

 This is Joseph up in the lift.  It made me nervouse just watching him as he moved it up for the beginning cut.

 another view looking up (or him looking down)

 almost fully extended

Friday evening he was able to take out the first tree. This is a veiw of the second tree. When he cut the top off, it was suppose to fall toward the apple trees but instead came straight down.  He had to drop his chain saw to move out of the way as the branches passed by him.  He said it was like a train going by. His wrist got bruised but thankfully that was all that happened.  The chainsaw received a little damage but kept working just fine.

The trees in the early morning sunlight before we began our days work of taking them out. They will be sorely missed.  Eric and Keith weren't able to help as Eric wasn't able to come home from school and Keith had to work, so it looked like it was only going to be Joseph and Tyler.  To our great surprise as we were just getting started, our friends the Syndergaards showed up with chainsaws in hand to help us out.  The Syndergaards own several acres and have lots of huge trees, so he has lots of experience in cutting them down.  His knowledge and help was invaluable.

 The boom -lift in its resting stage.

 Joseph and Michael going up in the boon. They worked together from the boom while Tyler helped out down below.

The beginning of the pile, so nicely stacked. This didn't stay neat for long.

 

 Look how high they are and probablystill had 25 feet above them. Michael actually climbed into the trees to attatch ropes and such.  It was quite nerve racking for the wives watching from down below.

 Tyler watching the trimming, while resting on the ever growing pile of branches.

The Syndergaard children, Keith (after he got home from work) and Joseph, as they are getting this trunk into place so our neighbor Shane could pull it forward with his truck.

 

 Michael cutting up the trunks. As you can see the yard is covered in branches and logs. At 4:00 our time was up on the boom, so they had to stop cutting trees. We still have four more to go, so that will be for another day.

 Looking over the yard and the many different piles.  Shane had already hauled one truck load of wood to his house.  We told him he could have all the wood he wants for his kindness in lending use of his truck.  He also came over and helped cut up the wood.

 Saw dust everywhere.

 Looking down the fence line at the stumps.  It was so sad when they cut them the sap was bubbling up through the stump for a little bit.  Michael estimated that there was probably 300 gallons of water in each of the trees, they were extremely heavy.

Just another pile of wood on the east side of the house.  What a day we had. No major accidents, only a few minor incidents. Thankfully they were wearing hard hats as one branch came down on Joseph knocking his hat off and then Michael had was clotheslined when a branch swung out and the rope knocked the breath out of him.  The only casualty of the day was my anjou pear tree. A trunk came down and took most of it out.  I was so sad to see what little bit of it was left.  I don't know if it willl be able to recover as only a third of the tree is left. But I would rather lose a tree than have someone get hurt. Our chain link fence took some damage but we can easily replace the top railings.  We are so grateful to everyone who gave of their time and energy to help us with this enormous project.It was an incredibly hard job and everyone worked so hard helping us. In a few weeks time we will rent the boom again and take the remaining trees out. The remaining trees are further away from any buildings, so it will be a little easier  to let them fall and not worry about what they might hit. 

 



Our trees ( part 1)

 fall 2010

When we moved into our home 19 years ago our yard was quite barren. There was  thin grass in the front with two bushes on each side of the bay window and a little grass on the side of the house. The rest of the yard was comprised of alfalpha and weeds with  lots of stickers.  Also due to the lack of trees in the neighborhood there were no birds. Our cat "Slippers" came in one night covered in stickers. It took Joseph and I over an hour to remove them all from his fur. We have spent alot of time in our yard planting fruit and shade trees, flowers, berries as well as attempting to grow a garden in the clay soil that we have been working to improve over the years.  Since we are at the bottom of a hill we wanted to have privacy as well as shade so we put in  a dozen poplar trees above the rocks, along the back fence line. Our little sticks, have now grown  into these 70 foot beauties that you can see in the background. We have lost a couple through the years and now there are 10.  We realized  in the last two years that the tree trunks were pushing against the fence, as well as starting to show signs of disease.  After last Decembers' huge windstorm, that took out hundreds of trees (mostly pines) over all of Davis County we realized that our trees were now more of a liablilty than an asset and that it would be best to take them out. So after much deliberation and hesitation, Joseph spent the summer cutting the lower branches off the trees, so that it would save time when we rented the boom-lift to take the top of trees down.  We have a house directly behind us and we definetly did not want a tree landing on their house or the vinyl fence  that separates their front yard from their back yard, so the first three trees had to be done very carefully.

This is a view of the tees after cutting the lower branches off.  You can see we hardly made a dent.

Joseph used an 18' ladder to reach as high as he could, even cutting from our neighbors side. They were very good about us going into there yard an doing what we needed to do.  He had one minor accident when one branch he cut, which had a rope around it so he could lower it carefully to the ground, didn't do what he wanted it to do.  It swung around and crushed his finger against the trunk, cutting an artery.  I ran him into the Dr. where they clamped the artery to get it to stop bleeding and then gave him four stitches. 

This is the first pile of branches that he trimmed off.  It took three truck loads to take them to the dump.  Our neighbor across the street from us has been very gracious in letting us borrow his truck for this project.  We thought this was a huge pile but this is small compared to the mess we now have in our backyard.  To be continued.......

Emergency trip to Missouri

Two weeks ago I received a call from Jessica that their little boy needed emergency surgery. We had 36 hours notice, so I called Joseph at work so he could make arrangements to take it off. I spent the rest of the day getting everything ready, like  shopping for frozen food for the boys so they would have something to eat while we were gone, as well as for us to eat on our travels.  Since we were going all the way to Missouri Joseph wanted to stay a few extra days.  We got up early the next morning and were on the road by 3:45 am.  We took turns driving so could do it in one day.  By the time we got there 17 hours later, I was pretty numb.  Thankfully the surgery went well and Alex is recovering quickly. In the time we were there he improved a great deal.  You can read more about it on Jessica's blog.  I was so glad we could be there and help out with the other boys. We had a great time taking the boys to and from school and they sure loved having their papa there to play "pizza mountain".  I enjoyed feeding the chickens.  We always had chickens growing up and I didn't realize how much I missed being around them.  Missouri has been in a terrible drought this summer and everything was so brown.  They had some rain while we were there.  Saturday after Alex came home from the hospital, we left him and Jessica at home to rest while Bill took us to a nearby state park where we hiked to Devils Ice cave. These are the pictures we took there.

 

 reading about the cave system. 

 some of the caves have collapsed so these are the areas we saw.  This is looking down a  sink hole into one of the cave entrances.  We went down there and it was pleasantly cool.

 This is one area that is now a tunnel

 walking over to another opening

 Brian patiently waiting for us to finish reading the markers

 Bill with Brian and Trevor walking on the rocks in the stream

 Joseph and I with the grandsons

 Zachary and Brian,  stranded on an island  "Oh what are we going to do!!"

Brain riding his scooter

Zachary proud of being able to ride his bike without training wheels 

Here's our precious little one who is doing so well after surgery.  He is the happiest baby.  He has gone through so much in his five months and we are so grateful for the many miracles that continue to take place in his behalf.  We enjoyed our trip to Missouri.  For some reason it always feels like home to me.  I keep telling Joseph we need to move back there someday, but by then we probably won't have any family there anymore.  We took two days coming home which made it nice. We stayed in Sydney, Nebraska where Cabela's has a really nice campground and of course Joseph loves to wander through Cabela's.



end of summer scuba dive?

With school starting the men folk wanted to get in a dive so they decided to try Causey Resevoir  which isn't too far from here. What we didn't anticipate was the low water levels a a result of the drought we are in.  I have never been up there when the water has been so low. We usually go up  there to  watch the water run over the overflow in the spring.   Joseph wasn't able to go diving as a result of having stitches in his finger when a tree branch he was cutting smashed into his hand and cut an artery in one of his fingers, resulting in the need for four stitches. 

 

 

getting their equipment ready 

Yikes! the waters cold

 This is the south end of the lake. You can see how far down it is. Over on the other side where the dam is, the sides of the lake go down even farther. The boys were game and tried it out anyways. Unfortunately it was murky and no visibility. Ashley and I stayed over where the picnic table was and watched from a distance. You can see those pitcures on her blog. After they were finished we had sloppy joes and enjoyed the evening before heading home. Someday they need to go someplace exotic where there are things to see.

Visit from Texas

 

 Angela and Christine came in August for a week.  It was really nice having them here, especially so Christine could get to know "papa and nana" better. While they were here we went up to pineview for an afternoon and had a picnic on the beach.We did alot of DI hopping looking for books for Christine.

 The favorite of all the grandkids "Chauquit" milk

 another little sweetheart, just chillin

 With her papa

 Enjoying the sun

 Christine with her doll

 

 celebrating Eric's birthday

 making headbands for Audrey