tree gone

We’re settling in well, but we just can’t ignore the large elephant in the room. Or, more accurately, in the front yard. Take a look at this early pic and you’ll see what I mean. Yep, a big ugly tree, slap-bang in the middle of our lawn.

I’m sure it wasn’t born ugly. No doubt it’s deteriorated over the years, before entering this ‘near death’ stage. Neighbors say it’s been like this for ages, and one opposite asked when we planned to remove it –presumably ’cause he’s sick of looking at it.

We made it a priority, and soon discovered that removing large trees is not cheap. But we found a local guy who gave us a reasonable quote. We also had to check with the city, to confirm it wasn’t a heritage tree. It wasn’t, so we…or rather it was good to go.

Then we realized why this process is so expensive. A whole day’s work, involving two guys, a chainsaw and a truck. They frantically trimmed and sawed, before grinding the roots and cleaning up. They even tamed two further overgrown trees fronting our wall.

We can now see through the mass of greenery (below) which used to mask our all-purpose room windows. As a result, the afternoon light is incredible…though I’m pretty sure we’ll be cursing the lack of cover at the height of summer.

The end result is a big improvement and looks way less cluttered. We immediately got some positive neighborly feedback, which is nice. I think everyone, us included, is pleased to see this poor tree finally put out of its misery.

As a welcome bonus, we were left with this decently-sized pile of wood (the tree-cutter took some too). We look forward to building some roaring fires during the winter months. It’s no Boston, but it can get pretty cold here.

With the tree gone, we now have the tricky task of growing grass in its place, along with the lawn’s other dead patches. Neither of us has the greenest of fingers, so we’re expecting the outdoor space to present some big challenges.

[Edit: we since learned that wood piles are magnets for Black Widow spiders, and have spied at least one (okay, just one) nearby. Needless to say, we will approach our wood with caution.]