Two tall trees reduced to stumps.

Our backyard was THE place to watch yesterday. Neighbors craned their necks, stood on ladders to watch and some very cute children watched in awe from their mom's bedroom window as two men scaled two very large maple trees and slowly chopped them to the ground. We had these two incredible maple trees in our backyard. The story is (as told by our neighbor) the woman who owned all of the land that is now our street, planted those two trees when she got married. She sold the land when she was 70, which was about 20 years ago. The trees survived this sale, then a subdividing of the land and then construction of new houses, children climbing them and who knows what else. Unfortuantely the trees were not able to escape old age and shortly after we moved in we found out that the trees were dying from the top down. Our neighbors eventually told us that large branches the size of small tree trunks were regularly falling in their yards! Meanwhile on our side, the trees were healthy and beautiful. Apparently the previous homeowner knew all of this and refused to do anything about it. Nice. We hired some experts and after much discussion, the decision was made to cut them down. It was quite the event to watch. Two crazy men high up in the trees sending large pieces flying to the ground. There was lost of power saws on the go. Gorilla watched in awe and announced that when he was a grown up, he would use a power saw. To which DH, every concious of issues of safety and power tools, announced "oh yeah, they are lots of fun!" Excellent. Because we need to encourage Gorilla to play with power tools. Scary thought. I've never used a power saw but my mother in law uses one regularly and for some reason that seems weird to me.

I had hoped to arrange our vow renewal in time to get re-married under one of those trees but that didn't work out. Perhaps now we can remarry beside one of the stumps. Sweet bliss! The trees are now gone and we are officially left with some stumps, lots of firewood (too bad our fireplace is gas!) and a very different looking yard. The good news is that now I can plant some fruit trees in my yard! I'm off to Victoria for a few days for work so after you've read this post, don't expect any changes until Monday.