Tree Saga Continued.

Did you miss me? Wonder where I've been?

Busy. Sick. And a fabulous visit from Kaitlynn...so I/we didn't do much around the house to blog about.

We're finally on the mend, or getting there at least. In all my downtime I made the terrible mistake of creating a list of "house projects" I'd like to complete. Nothing is more daunting than putting it all down on paper! HAHA. Oh well, one step at a time!

We made one attempt this past weekend to replace the light fixture in our bedroom. Michael was being too slow for me so I went ahead and shut off the power, got all the supplies ready, removed the fixture that was there...only to discover that we didn't have the correct bulbs for the new fixture and neither of us were feeling well enough to make a trek out to the store. (Yes I know it isn't that far, but you should have seen us, we've been a mess!) Anyhow, I had to put the old fixture back up without making any progress. Sad. Of course at this point I was so out of energy that nothing else got completed for days...or uh still to this point 1.5 weeks later. That's life!

Back to our progress...
Yesterday was finally the day for tree removal. Remember this:












Now who plants a tree in the middle of a driveway? Or better yet, who plans a driveway to go right around a tree? Silly. Oh and let me remind you that this tree was the demise of Mr. previous owner of the house. Apparently he decided a while back that he was going to climb up into said tree and trim the branches. He happened to be well into his 70's at the time, and Mrs. previous owner, their children, and neighbors expressed concern and recommended that they call a tree service instead. Mr. previous owner wasn't having it. So, mid tree climb/branch trimming Mr. previous owner fell out of the tree. Apparently he never recovered from the fall.

We had the smarts to call someone who knows what they are doing. Let this be a lesson to all of you reading this!

The tree folks arrived with their big bucket truck and chipper. Here are some action shots Michael got while I was busy slaving away at the office all day. (I'm half disappointed I missed all this action, and half glad I wasn't there to witness large hunks of tree being sliced off and dropped 30 feet to the ground...all within inches of our house.)




















And now we're left with this:






We have sun light! It's a little bittersweet to see perfectly good trees cut down and trimmed, but we've gained space, and sunlight. Perhaps my tomatoes, cucumbers, and basil will stand a fighting chance now. (By the way, something has been eating my basil. I don't know what, I just know it isn't looking very good right now. Any idea what I can do to remedy this situation?)

Note: It's always important to go into these things with the proper expectation. For example, most contractors, electricians, plumbers, tree removal folks, etc... will not show up on time. Every job will take longer than anticipated and will have complications. In addition, no project is ever completed without a little damage. The garage is missing a few corner shingles, all the plants on the side of the house are toast, and there's a (small) crater in the driveway. All par for the course I suppose.

One more note: Did you happen to see the state of our fence in the last picture. Sad isn't it? Even nicer when you see all the neighbor's "junk" back there too. If I didn't know what the rest of the house and yard looked like I might think we lived in a trailer park or something. Not that there's anything wrong with trailer parks. I'm just saying...