As a way of maintaining the value of our home, we’ve decided to tackle one large project a year. This year it was the back yard—which has always been unusable. Bet you have these projects going on too! What we originally wanted to do was cut down some large hardwood trees that were dying or looking to be unsafe. We found a landscape man who could help us out, and then he also gave us some ideas of making our back yard functional.
Our backyard was definitely not an attraction when we bought this house almost 20 years ago since we knew children wouldn’t be needing it for outside play. While it was attractive when we moved in, over the years the plantings got bigger and became overwhelming.
The hardwood trees branched out more and more so the lawn didn’t get the sun it needed to support grass growing. We started feeling closed in whenever we looked at the area. The Leland cypress trees that served as a buffer between us and our neighbor were looking like they were on their last legs, and some of the hardwood trees looked like they were dying.
One of our big fears is for one of these large trees to fall over during a storm (or just because) and hit our house or our neighbor’s house. So we got some quotes, got approvals from the city and our HOA to remove the trees, and had some entertainment as the trees were brought down and removed.
Then the Leland cypress trees were pulled down. These trees will need to be replaced according to our HOA as part of this project since they were original to the landscaping.
A rope had been attached to the top of the dying tree, onto the top of an adjoining tree, and wound around the base of the curved tree. Sanday then cut down the dying tree from the bottom, section by section, using a slanted cut. As that section fell away, the other crew member loosened the rope around the base of the curved tree and lowered the dying tree. Over and over sections of the dying tree were cut away and the tree was lowered. What an amazing technique.
After they left, we realized that we hadn’t thought about the stumps. So we called Nick, our landscape guy, and asked him if he had a person to remove stumps. Of course he did. Scott came over a couple of days later and provided us with some more entertainment.
After this job was completed, we started getting ready for our trip to the Dakotas. We’ll show you the rest of the story in the rest of the in-between posts for 2020.
