Tuesday, September 7, 2010

TREE CUTTING DAY

My day of laundry and housekeeping got interrupted. I sent my Avon order off and worked in the house until after lunch. Hubbie took 1/2 day off today to help with a job that we have been dreading.
Standing on our drive way and too close for comfort to #2 son's house stood this huge triple oak tree, dead as a doornail.Limbs have been falling out of it for over a year and we all knew it needed to come down. However this type tree is known as a " widow maker" because of the danger in cutting it down.
A lucky break for us came when hubbie talked to our Associate pastor who is a tree cutter by profession a couple weeks ago and ask him to take a look at the tree.
Last week he called and said the church was renting a crane to hoist him up to clean the steeple and if we wanted he would just rent the crane the rest of the day and come take that tree down. Of course I had to watch so that put a hold on my house cleaning for a while.This is a bigger crane than he ordered but it turned out to be another lucky thing.Our Associate Pastor is about my oldest son's age and has the same bullet proof attitude.
As he suits up he tells hubbie and me not to worry about a thing.Holy MAloly thats high !!! For someone that is afraid of heights I'm petrified and he just calmly gives the crane operator hand signals while dangling above the tree.Too high for yelling back and forth he communicates with the crane operator by walkie talkie.He saws...... some of the limbs are so rotten they decinercrate into a puff of dust when they hit the ground.Two down one to go....... He and hubbie decided to leave the big stumps standing until hubbie has time later to cut them down and saw them up for firewood. Hubbie can safely cut them down without any limbs above him to fall when the tree is vibrated by the saw.He dangled from cables and sawed for almost 3 hours, I couldn't believe his strength and stamina wielding that chainsaw around non-stop.At this point we really got nervous as the wind started blowing and that tree top was blowing right toward him.Thank You Lord this is the one we've been waiting for !!!!We fixed spaghetti for supper for #1 and #2 son and g-son then we all went down and did some clean-up. #1 son took his track hoe and stacked all the big limbs so they can be sawed up later. We fixed the wires on the fence that got broke so we could turn Snowball back down in the pasture in the morning.G-son did his part as picking up sticks from the driveway and throwing them into the bushes was the kind of work that's right up his alley.

As this day comes to a close I am so grateful to God for His grace and for our good friends and family as we worked together to accomplish seemingly impossible task.

I baked cakes as soon as I got back in the house tonight and at midnight I am waiting for the last ones to come out of the oven.
Good Night and God Bless.

2 comments:

NCmountainwoman said...

Nice photographs of a difficult job. We had a dead tree removed last year. It was really scary watching them swinging around with that chain saw.

Betsy Banks Adams said...

Hi Marilyn, Glad you had some help with that HUGE task.... That was nice of the Associate Minister to help... I know you are glad that job is OVER.

Save some spaghetti for me.... Sounds GOOD!!!

Hugs,
Betsy