Want to Play Catch?

When we moved into this house 34 years ago, this silver maple tree was already pretty big. We had the dead branches removed and the tree topped about fifteen years ago.  Unfortunately, its prime has passed and it was time for it to come down. Most of the branches away from the house were dead, which meant all the weight of the tree was in the branches that hang over the house, just one more reason it's hard for me to sleep at night. So last week, Gilberto from Carpentersville and his crew came to town and put on a show. It is very enjoyable to watch a group of people who really know what they are doing. On the downside they started at 6:40 (yes, I'd forgotten, but they have one of those in the morning, too), but by 10:00 they were done and gone. The big pieces of the tree were in our front yard, where a power lift truck came by in the afternoon and picked them up, the stump had been ground down to below the surface, and they had cleaned up our yard and our neighbor's yard of all the leaves and sticks that had fallen. They were a very professional crew: the two or three that were bringing the tree down and sawing it into movable pieces were just enough to keep the three younger guys who moved it all on to the front yard with hand carts working steadily. Some of the pieces were still pretty big; it required all three of them to move the cart to the front yard. Their rope system worked very well; all the pieces were lowered carefully from the tree and, other than a couple of divots in the grass, we had no damage to the house or garage. The second picture below shows them getting ready to bring down the trunk; all five of the people not sawing were on the rope to make sure it came down where they wanted.  

I'm sure if the boys were to spend much time thinking about it, they may be disappointed we didn't do this twenty-five years ago. Our back yard is not that big. This tree with its low hanging branches, made throwing a baseball or football in the back yard an aggravation. And the roots are so close to the surface that you could get a pretty good bump as you went down the Slip-N-Slide if you didn't position it carefully. Most of our playing was done in the front yard or in the street, although the baseball fields at Lagoon Park and the playgrounds at Larkdale Park were both within easy walking distance (or running or biking distance) so that they could go there with their friends. The back yard looks very different with the tree gone; I'm sure the kitchen will be warmer this summer without the tree to shade it for much of the day. We lasted a day before we went out and bought an umbrella for the deck to give us some shade during the day as we watch Whimzy run around the back yard. I decided not to put up a picture of the back yard with the tree gone. You are just going to have to come visit us if you want to see how it looks. We'll have the lemonade cold - feel free to stop by.