Timber!

Today is gardening day. Sam took her car to the garage to be fixed and when she returned the gardening was already starting. Today the garden would go from this;

To this;

In a single day. 

Ok so, it wasn't just me and Sam that done this, in actual fact we were mere bystanders and just watched as Lumberjacks came into the garden and set to work. 

They started with the small tree,  making short work of it and feeding it into the chipper leaving nothing but a stump in it's place. Then the heavy work began. Using a 90 foot crane to lift a climber high into the branches and allowing him to rope off and work with the chain saw tied around his waist. 

To watch them work in such a confined space was amazing. They had the crane on the neighbor's drive and the chipper on Sam's but the trick was to not allow the branches to fall on the houses and garages they over hung. Piece by piece the tall tree began to vanish. 

Sam and I watched as they craned down limb after limb and the group of men busied themselves with chainsaws slicing them into pieces small enough to fit into the chipper or large enough to get hoisted into the trailer for cart away. 

The smell of saw dust and chainsaw fumes brought back many happy memories of when we were kids and the family went wood cutting for the winter months and the wood fires we had. I would help in the garden, come logging camp, chopping wood, splitting wood and moving logs as my dad run the chainsaw filling the garden with sawdust and fumes. There is a lot of wood in this tree and I know it would of lasted my family more than a couple of winters, however I don't think I can fit it all in my carry on luggage. Sorry. 

Once they had cut enough of the limbs down, it was time for the fall and the men roped off the tops while one man took his long chainsaw and cut out a wedge. 

He worked his way around the trunk, it was thick and took some work to get his saw in as deep as possible. He pulled his blade out and the men began to pull on the ropes. The big old tree still had some fight to give and it's creaks and groans were it's dying moans as the trunk finally cracked and fell.

Saw dust fell like smoke from the sawn tops of the trunk and it fell upon its dismembered limbs and hit the ground with a ground shaking thunk. It shook the house as it landed, leaving two great divits in the ground, rocked a little and lay still. It was down. 

It was down but not over. The men then had to hoist and cut the remaining limbs and the large trunk into their loader for cart away. The root grinder was next; a machine with steel teeth that ground away the stumps and six inches below the surface leaving nothing above ground. They also ground away a stump in the neighbor's garden free of charge, for letting them use their access for the crane and loader. 

We watched as the garden was cleared and the men left as quickly as they came. We then admired the sun kissed garden that was before left in shade and the imaginings of what Sam could now do with her now sun filled garden flooded her mind. 

We ordered dinner in and talked about what we had seen. We turned in early.