Hooray for good people!

Here's my church family at work. I asked for help from the mission team and they came through like champions. I got in touch with the chairman of the team and he put out the call to the guys at church who have chain saws. They were set to come to my house between 4:30 and 4:45.

About 3:30, I heard a chain saw start up so of course I went out to see what was happening. There was Bill, already hard at work. I hollered Hi! He said "Oh good! I got the right house. Can you imagine how surprised your neighbors would have been if I'd started on the wrong tree?"




Bill made short work of cutting up what was left of the Bradford. I was torn -- sad at the tree's loss but thrilled that the problem was being handled so well.

A police officer pulled up to the house across the street as Bill was cutting limbs off the main trunk. Bill had tied a control rope to help direct the tree when he made the cut to fell the trunk. The officer was watching as he interviewed my neighbor (I don't know what that was about but she was standing on her front porch and it looked like all she had on was a long T-shirt, like she had been asleep.)

Bill cut the wedges for the trunk cut and started testing the fall pattern. The officer got nervous and hollered "Let me move my car before you do that!!"
Hee hee.

Just about the time Bill finished cutting the major cuts, Paul pulled up. His son is the one who coordinated all the guys who were going to work on it. Paul was great at helping move branches to the curb and really cleaned up the area with a rake.



Before you know it, everything is cut, stacked and bagged. The street is clean and Paul even got some of the gutter mud cleaned out so the water from any more rain won't pool at my house.

All gone...



Now I have a barren yard and a clear view of my neighbor in the T-shirt.

The other tree is still there. It's a maple tree and I think this particular tree is ugly as sin, but it is healthy and strong. I don't know what I'm going to do about landscaping, but I've never liked the maple tree.

Fortunately, these guys saved me hundreds of dollars. Potentially thousands of dollars -- the Bradford could have completely toppled into my house in the next wind storm.

Yay for good people!!!

Oh yeah-- I also got my washing machine fixed this morning and while the repairman was here I had him clean out the innards of the dryer, too. One small problem later: I found a d-e-a-d m-o-u-s-e in front of the dryer later. SHUDDER!!