What you don't necessarily see is the mess that involved each stage of trimming. Jason could only get so far and then had to move the truck to a different spot, but we had to clean up all the wood and branches before he could do that. The truck and trailer on the road shows how full it got (and there was another truck and trailer) and we also had a pile of wood in the driveway for pieces that were big enough for firewood.
AJ wanted to run the chainsaw too, so after some advice, we let him go & he really enjoyed it! There were moments when both him & Jason were sawing and it sounded like one of those lumberjack competitions. I don't think the neighbors got much napping in over the weekend!
This last part had us just as nervous because we just didn't know how rotten this tree was and we didn't want it to fall on Jason as he was cutting. It all worked out well & when this bad boy fell, it felt like a small earthquake. Faith said she felt it in the house through the chair she was sitting in. I was in the neighbor's driveway, and I could feel it there also.
The darker part of the tree is the rotten part and you can see it effected over half of it, so it was a big hazard to have around and needed to come down. I took a hammer claw to it & it broke apart like a sponge! Jason whittled away at it the next day and said it was rotten all the way into the ground. We will have a contractor come over with a stump grinder to mulch up the rest, but until then, Bella likes having another obstacle to climb and jump off of.
If any of you are thinking that tree removal is in Jason's future, I would bet that he would graciously decline and leave the scary work to the professionals. We were just trying to save $300.
