This weekend was very productive and labor intensive at the new house. As my previous post mentioned, the house is being bricked and insulated, and that is moving along quite nicely. Since it is being bricked there is a ton of trash laying around the house, so it is a perfect time for me to do some “cleaning out” of our lot. As you can see from earlier posts, our lot backs up to trees and a very wooded area.

So, I borrowed a chain saw, bought some huge hedge clippers and went to town!

A buddy of mine helped me out on Saturday morning and we cleared out a ton of dead trees and big items. The chain saw was humming and we made great progress. Knowing that my time for FREE debris removal is limited I headed out to the lot again today…and that is where the story gets interesting.
Here are some pictures of the “debris”.

Today, Sunday was a very productive day. Robin and the girls showed up later in the afternoon. The girls helped out, played and Robin was a champ. The day was coming to a close and the girls headed out. As I was wrapping things up, I looked off into the woods and saw a huge, dead tree. The tree was a towering 30-40 foot tall dead tree…it looked awful. I thought, how on earth am I going to be able to look at that out my window..it must go. Now please keep in mind, I am no John Deer, or professional chain saw guy! For those of you who really know me you are trying to wrap your mind around the fact that I am clearing out debris on a wooded lot!

Anyway, the huge old gray dead tree towering in the woods is begging for me to chain saw it down. So I went it for a closer look. Climbing through heavy brush, and navigating through a complete mess I could sense the Holy Spirit saying “What in the heck are you doing?”. But I kept on going. Coming to the base of this towering tree the adrenaline started flowing and the inner man said NO PROBLEM! So I went back to get the chain saw. On my way back I got hung up in barb wire. Yea, no doubt this was the Holy Spirit again saying..”Dude, your a digerati, not a chain sawarati!” Here is a picture of the barb wire damage…yes, there was blood.

So now, chain saw in hand, adrenaline flowing, Holy Spirit screaming you’re an IDIOT… and I’m “all in”. There is no way that towering gray dead tree is going to stand one more day. Here we go… About 20 min later, cutting on all 4 sides of the tree it finally falls to the ground. Well kinda. It fell on top of another big tree, broke in half and now looks worse than before. CRAP!

After another 20 or so min of pushing, pulling, praying, mentally cussing and sawing it came to the forest floor for good. Here is a picture of the bottom half!

Wow, what a blast! I am already looking forward to next weekend…volunteers welcome.