A Tale of Two Trees and a Chainsaw

Today is supposed to be the only day it doesn't rain this work week, so I made sure to get the laundry done and out to the solar dryer early. The rest of the day was spent working on the gardens and getting ready to saw down the two spruce trees on the east side of the yard.

We had a visit from our friend Larry this afternoon. He brought along a friend of his who has a spectacular woodland garden that I'd love to visit some day. Our gardens here are not in good condition at all; since we've been spending time this spring remodeling both the gardens and starting on the house, everything needs work from weeding to moving plant material, but being as both of the gentlemen are gardeners, they understood. I truly appreciated their kindness and understanding!

Around 5PM, we decided it was time to remove the trees. I know, more blathering on about chainsaws AGAIN and for heaven's sake, why plant trees only to saw them down years later? The answer is when you plant a tree which is no bigger than, say, your average geranium in the middle of two acres it just doesn't seem right to leave forty feet between plantings, though that would be ideal spacing for the mature trees. Like so many other people before us and since, we planted the tiny trees about ten feet apart so there would be less 'holes' in the landscape. Lessons learned, remember?

Below is Joel, age 4, helping us weed the tiny trees with a rake much bigger than he is:



Following Carl and the tiller and checking to make sure Dad didn't miss any weeds. The area they are tilling in the picture is now the site of the quarry garden.



And leveling the soil after tilling:



These pictures were taken on June 20, 1990. Ten days later, June 30, 1990, David was born.

Twenty years went by and the trees grew to be around 25' tall. This brings us to today, and the demise of two more of the teeny seedlings which we had planted by the shop. The two we removed this afternoon had become quite sparsely needled due to being in the shade of the willow tree southwest of them and also because they were competing for space with each other. As I mentioned before, gosh, they looked SO far apart when we planted them as little 1' trees!



A few more views:



It's obvious the spruce were past their prime, even though they are relatively young.


As I've said many times before, Joel has been working on this yard for nearly as long as we have and deserves so much credit for his hard work. Both of the 'boys' have been invaluable in getting all the work done around here. Tonight was no exception--Joel set up the time lapse camera for yet another fast-forward work session: (Just click on the little arrow to play the video)




Joel called Cody who took the spruce trunks to have them made into lumber and we hauled the limbs out to our brush pile, which is now approaching a record size. We finished up around 7PM.

Once again, it was dark before I had a chance to take an 'after' picture, but I will soon.

It's supposed to rain the rest of the week, so there won't be much progress in the gardens-looks like a great time to finish the living room curtains, right?

Karen