Tom and his brother, Ralph, worked on taking 2 trees down a few weeks ago. Tom tackled the enormous tree in the backyard himself. It made me really nervous but he knew what he was doing and only took down as much as he safely could. Part of it still stands. He is going to bring a cherry picker home from work to take down the rest of it.
There were basically three sections of the tree. The first one comes down easily.
It is mostly hollow inside and filled with nesting material from the birds.
And also a lot of compost.
And some of these. The chickens really enjoyed them.
I think this is the nesting material from the American kestrels that have nested here for 3 years.
And a lot of old honeycomb. This tree was filled with bees. I remember when they swarmed and left. I had never seen a swarm so huge!
The second section was very nerve wracking to watch. But sort of cool, too.
The third section and the trunk remain. Hopefully Tom will be able to get them down soon. Next was what the kids have always called the “cactus tree”. It looked like a suguaro cactus with its 3 “arms” in the air. Ralph arrived in time to help take this tree down. The girls and I lounged in our home theater chairs and watched the show.
Here the arms have already had their tops cut off.
Ralph works on an arm.
And there it goes.
Next, they work on removing what Jasmine referred to as the offensive finger.
I just love watching these 2 work together.
The cleanup took as long as the actually downing of the tree. We have a lot of bonfire wood! My sister counted the rings of this tree. It was well over 30 years old. We estimate the behemoth in the backyard to be over 50. We will sure miss these old men.
