Lumber Jane

I love the tranquility and the connection to nature that comes from living in the woods. Robby loves spending his hours playing in the stream, climbing the trees and looking for assorted creatures only to return home sopping wet and covered with mud and unknown muck. There is only one not-so-small complaint I have about the setting: the upkeep is a bear!

Last year we had a large tree cut down and we discovered the high cost of tree removal. It took me nearly six weeks to roll the imposing trunk sections up the hill so that the yard would be clear. If it weren't for Mr. Bill's assistance, I'm sure that the brush, twigs and branches would still be littering our yard. Once everything was cleaned up, I vowed that I would, at all cost, avoid getting another tree cut down.

Scott apparently misunderstood my statement because when he heard that the electric company would cut down our large hickory tree at no charge, he jumped at the opportunity. I was saddened when the crew arrived last week to remove one of my favorite trees. It didn't bother me that it was beginning to lean towards the power lines, but I figured that it was better to be safe than sorry. If we could get a tree removed, it was probably a good opportunity.

The power company did cut down the large hickory tree, but I became agitated when the crew left the tree chunks in the center of our yard. Without bothering to change out of my pink monkey pajama bottoms, I went running after their truck to find out when they were coming back to finish the job. This is when I learned that Scott's free-tree-removal plan was fatally flawed.

The power company will cut a tree down, but they do not remove it from the property. I now have obscenely heavy hickory tree sections, each 4 foot long, laying throughout the my front yard. Each section seems impervious to my pushing. Incidentally, I learned that standing over it and cursing has no impact either!

Of course Robby is delighted with the cut up tree. The trunk pieces make an ideal playground as he playfully moves from section to section. I spent the weekend schlepping the smaller sections to the wood pile. After toiling for countless hours I had cleared everything that I could lift into the wheelbarrow, leaving the unmovable pieces for another time. 

I have thinking been about how to remove the trunk sections from the yard. Each idea eventually leads me to the same conclusion- it is going to be slow, difficult and probably painful. So much for our great money saving idea!