Trees

   We had a couple of pine trees which towered high above us down in the "lower forty", as I like to describe the bottom tier of our 3-tiered backyard. My guess was they were about eighty feet tall and I believe they have been around for close to forty years. More than anything, they provided respite from the early morning sun and also a bit of a barrier between us and our backyard neighbours.

Our two pine trees, in all their
(sort of) glory.

   But they were dead. Or dying.
   We had been aware of this for some time now and knew that at least one, or both, would eventually need to come down. We almost arranged for this last summer but didn't. This summer, we finally decided to pull the plug and arranged for a company to come in and finally do the deed.
   They were supposed to come at the end of July but as luck (or misfortune) would have it a large chunk of the deadest tree fell off after a bad windstorm and landed in the neighbours' yard. The arborist they hired to clean that up offered to do our trees at the same time and so we hired him on.
   Troy was the name of the fellow doing the work and for the most part he was a one-man wrecking crew. This unfortunately necessitated the job taking three or four days but as we were in the middle of holidays and always available this was not a major concern.
   

Keenan (at the top) and Troy,
takin' 'er down!

Along the way, Keenan, my stepson, indicated to Troy that he was quite interested in learning all the ins and outs of taking down large trees. Troy basically told him the different things you needed for the job and Keenan immediately went out and picked them up!

All done!

   Once all the main branches had been removed, Troy then gave Keenan the opportunity to climb up one of the trunks and start chainsawing off smaller sections. As this was going on, Troy was quick to give advice about more efficient, safer ways of doing things and Keenan, being the quick study that he is, picked up on all of those things right away.
   So, eventually (and sadly) the trees came down and we now have this wide expanse of blue sky (and the neighbour's house) to look at! We asked Troy and Keenan to leave us the bottom portions of the tree so that hopefully we can incorporate them into the yard design. On a happier note---no giant mess of pine cones and needles to clean up every Spring!

Some of the aftermath

   

After the clean-up.