And The Tree Came Tumbling...Up...Then Down

Yesterday, as we celebrated Columbus Day, we noticed a crane turn on our street at stop at our neighbors's house. They weren't putting up a roof, they weren't removing a junked car. No, they were taking out a tree.

A huge, gigantic tree.

We live in a desert. It's a high desert, but technically, a desert none the same. Back in 1847 a bunch of people moved into the valley and decide to stay. In order to survive, they needed to direct the water from the mountains into places were they wanted food to grow.

They did a pretty good job.

As people multiplied, they built homes and put in yards. They also planted trees. We're no Seattle or Portland, or even the Carolinas, but we've got some trees around. The tree my neighbor removed was an old cottonwood that had been there for decades. Watching them dismantle it huge limb by huge limb was fascinating. A worker in the tree hooked up the crane, then cut off the limb. The crane then hoisted it over the house and on to the street where other workers chopped it up and put it in a wood shredder. They were extremely efficient. In a matter of hours, the entire tree was gone, reduced to wood chips and firewood.

I snapped pictures and took time lapsed videos. The "before and after" shots are amazing. We've got trees on our lot, but we've only been here since 2003. Our fifteen-year old trees can't compare, but I suppose one day the trees we've planted may end up threatening our home's foundation and become a hazard, like the tree next door. And on that day, we'll most likely need to rent a crane and do the same thing they did. I'm sure it will be just as fascinating then.

A Little Arboreal Experiment...

My wife does a lot of reading. She reads about a lot of things, raising kids, home storage, homeschooling, and occasionally, yard work.

It was during one of these occasional reading adventures that she came across a way to improve your yard in many ways--one of the biggest being the reduced need for water in, say, a garden. It involved placing large amounts of copped wood over areas of our yard.

Yesterday morning as we slept in we heard what sounded like large trucks driving up and down our street. It turned out to be a tree trimming service, Steve's Trees, to be more exact. My neighbor hired them to do some trimming.

We had discussed having a trimming service drop off their trimmings on our property a few times in the past--we even called a local company (not Steve...) to see if they would help us out. We never heard from them again. But Steve came through! He unloaded the chopped trees right on our driveway.

We spent the next hour and a half spreading the product on several areas of our yard. Will it work? Will the effects benefit our yard as was promised in the literature? Will our experiment yield positive results?

Time will tell.