Day: April 9, 2004

Well, six hours later, the tree guys have wrapped up and headed on out. They did a fantastic job. The trees actually seem to belong now. They actually ended up taking out a small spruce that was dead most of the way up and leaning back toward the house. Fortunately its small size (less than 4 inches in diameter) meant we didn’t need a permit to remove it. They were also able to give the small cherry tree a lot more room and light, so it should start growing stronger now.

And wow, it looks like a whole new house now. From the street you can easily see the whole house—which, since it stretches sideways across the lot, looks enormous. You can also see the lack of work we’ve done on the front landscaping, so I predict I’ll be giving that a fair amount of attention over the next few weekends. In fact, I think I’ll head outside now and do some cleanup, now that I can see what I’m doing.

Lisa and her mom are at Heronswood right now for the spring woodland garden showing, but when they get back with the camera I’ll post before and after shots.

I’m working at home (WAH, in the inevitable Microsoft acronym) this morning so that I can answer questions from Davey Tree as they trim up the overgrown pines in our front yard. They’ve already done the heavy lifting of the removal of branches up to about eight feet from the sidewalk and removing the small spruce that was dead most of the way up and growing back toward the house. Now they’re doing the finesse work: pruning the deodora cedar so that it doesn’t overshadow the cherry tree, getting some of the deadwood off the cherry, handling any remaining thinning on the pines.

The dogs have been mostly good, though there’s been a bit more barking than is ideal. But when a chainsaw and a tree chipper (and two strange men) are in the driveway and the front yard, who can blame them for a little bark every now and again?