The Tree that Wouldn't Let Go

On Friday we had a tree service come out to our house to get rid of our poor fallen tree in the backyard.  The men seemed really nice and totally went down on their original price to get the job....which is always a plus for us.

After the kids climbed up the tree and after we took some pictures...

(Of course J wanted to take a pic of her "kicking" the tree down with the kids looking scared...best picture!  Love the facial expressions on the kids' faces!)

...the guys started in with the chainsaw to cut the tree into pieces.  We all sat by the window and watched the sad show.

But when they got to the trunk, near the root, they ran into some problems.  First, there were carpenter ants in the tree and they made a big mess of the inside of the trunk.  Then, it turned out that the root of the tree was as thick as the trunk.  These guys thought that it would be a quick job, but instead they were at our house for about 2 hours!  They took a pickax to the root and they still couldn't get it out.  The guys (including B) had to push and pull on the trunk a whole bunch to get it loose enough to pull out...without the root!  It was crazy!  So basically, the root of the tree (along with a part of the trunk) was still in our backyard.

Even though the guys didn't take the root out like they said they would, we were really impressed with the work they did.  At the end of hauling all of the tree to their truck, they came back to rake the yard, sweep the deck, and then they used their blower to clean the sidewalks.  They were really awesome!  We ended up giving them more than their estimate because they were at our house for a little over 2 hours...definitely longer than they had expected.  (By the way, they said that the tree fell because of a combination of things--the drought, the wind, and carpenter ants!  Yikes!)

For days, B has been looking for someone who owns a real axe....seriously, who owns a real axe here??  He was finally able to borrow a hatchet from a friend and tonight he finally hacked through most of the root. B just needed to get enough of the root out so that the lawn could be flat again.  The rest of the root will take time to die, but for now we're good.  Pretty crazy, right?

Now our backyard looks totally different.  There is definitely more morning sunlight that comes into the living room.  We'll miss this tree...it brought annoyances, but it was definitely a good tree.  Rest in peace, tree.