More changes

Saturday morning, we took a hard look at the ash tree out by the formal garden and decided it was time to make room for something a bit more exotic.  The ash was crowding the cedar next to it and made the area rather dark.  Once again, another oversight at planting time, which was over 30 years ago.  This tree was growing in our road ditch when we were first married and I planted it on the lawn way back in the day.

We've had some qualms about the Emerald Ash Borer problem anyway; though now the nursery owner at D &  D told us there is a cure of sorts, some liquid systemic you can pour around the tree every year that is supposed to thwart the bug.  This is really good news for anyone who has ash trees they want to save.  Just as with the elm trees and Dutch Elm disease, it is sad to see another species die out. 

Once we made the decision to take the tree down, Joel set to work making it happen.  He had some friends helping him, which was great and saved us a lot of work.  Joel hooked up the tree spade and they moved a Dwarf Alberta spruce and some seedling cedars to make room to drop the ash tree.

While Joel and his friends were getting ready to saw down the tree, Carl and I were trying to load our friend's trailer onto the deck of our own trailer.  Carl lifted the trailer with the H and we managed to secure it tightly.  He spent quite a bit of time earlier in the morning straightening the trailer and it looked pretty good when he was done.

Here we are with our 'tandem trailers'.

 After lunch, we all headed outside to saw the tree.  Here Joel is making the initial cut, notice the chain in the upper right hand corner:

The 574 and yours truly are attached to the other end of the chain:

So, here goes:

Success, with no injuries!  :-)  Once again I was amazed by the 'hole' it leaves in the sky and landscape.  Despite my sorrow at seeing a tree die, there was still the excitement of something new to come.  Joel and his crew set to work loading up all the brush while Carl and I headed to D & D to pick up the new trees for the garden.  The reason we towed our friends trailer in on top of our trailer was to kill two birds with one stone.  The tree nursery is less than a mile from our friend's house and we needed a trailer to bring the five trees home.  The biggest problem we had was unloading the trailer from our trailer, but it went well, too. 

The tree was 42' tall.

By the time we got back with the new trees, this was all cleaned up!

 Much later in the afternoon, here Joel and Carl are planting the new Acer triflorum, aka Three Flower Maple, near the ash tree stump. 

It's late in the day here, but we think the tree looks really nice in its new home.  We just hope the maple likes the conditions; it is a beautiful specimen.

Just before dark, my good friend, Ann, stopped in with her beautiful daughter and her boyfriend.  The young couple were on their way to the prom, so they stopped for some pictures.  I wish it had been lighter out, because the photos didn't turn out as well as they could have.  I often wish we had life-size statues in the yard, they sure do dress up the place!

After Ann dropped her daughter at the prom, she came back here to play Sheepshead; Richard and Emily stopped in too, so we had fun playing five handed.  We played until 1AM and then decided it was time to turn in for the night.  I was really tired Saturday night, and had over 6.5 miles on my pedometer.  Lots of walking.

I'll have more on what happened Sunday in the gardens tomorrow.

Karen