Waiting for Something to Happen

For a year now we have been waiting for something to happen.  Last spring half of the top of this big Ash tree fell and hung up.  The right side of the top was still up there.  Every morning when we looked out the window, the first thing we would see was this big widow maker.  We had looked it over several times and even used the tractor to lift it a bit and it was clear that any amount of pulling would bring down the other side right on top of us.

Last week the other side finally came down on its own.  Hooray!  Just the distance that it traveled as it fell makes me a little queasy.  That was one dangerous tree and that spot is exactly where the tractor would have been if we had tried to pull it out.

Today we took it down the rest of the way.

The end that was speared in the ground was cut shorter and shorter until it finally toppled out of there.

 

Notice there is still another big dangerous tree just to the left

Unfortunately, it is too mucky to get the tractor back there today without creating huge ruts.  So everything was carted out with a wheelbarrow.

I'm not exaggerating the mucky.  We made a big enough mess getting the brush pile built.  It is raining again now and is supposed to rain quite a bit tomorrow.  Thursday we will burn this pile before the spring burn ban goes into affect.

The ruts were smoothed out with the tractor loader

Now we have a big pile of fire wood to split.

We spent some time cleaning up yesterday's project.  We lowered stumps, picked up more sticks and trimmed out any broken Viburnum bushes.  At one point I was so tangled in rose bushes that I was ready to bulldoze the whole thing and make a lawn.  Then I got tangled up in a big poison ivy vine and had to go in and change clothes and scrub up.

It doesn't look too bad now.  It isn't one of those projects where you can stand back and say "well that looks a whole lot better!"  The best we can say is "well that's finally over."

For now.