Busy Weekend = Buttload of Pictures

When Jono bought our house there were many things to be thankful for. One of them was a fun tree in our backyard. Said tree was fun because it a) had a tire swing and b) had a Boo Radley knot. I love tire swings and Boo Radley knots. They make me so dad gum happy.

Want to know what doesn't make me happy?

I'm sure you do.

What doesn't make me happy is when the Boo Radley knot is so big, so round, and so rotten that the structural integrity of our tree is in jeopardy. Because when that happens, apparently, the tree could topple right over onto our house (or our neighbors). In fact, when Elena's dad (the talented arborist) looked at the tree, he gently let us know that waiting to take it down was flirting with disaster.

Oh, how I mourned that tree.

Until I remembered that it's an huge, ugly elm that drops branches all over our roof and yard.

Then I made my peace.

Unfortunately, it costs (approximately) a buttload to have a tree of that size taken down. So, my strong husband enlisted the help of his generous father who came into town just to help us with our tree predicament (chainsaw in tow).

So, Saturday morning, when I walked out of my house I found this in my backyard:


As you can see, there isn't a lot of room for a tree to just be fallin' over. Most of the limbs hung too close to various roofs to just hack away at them.

My brother-in-law came to help, too.

The big limbs were tied carefully, cut, and then lowered to the ground.
He's so manly :)



And, of course, my mother-in-law and I helped.

Which of course means that we watched until we got bored.
But before we got bored we made sure to sneak into cab when Jono wasn't looking.

Back to business.
This guy...he's good. Look at him.


At the end of it all, our yard looked like this:

And here's a peak at part of that rotten Boo Radley knot. The tree was basically innard-less.

And they finished by sun down. Aren't they great?