Possibly The Longest Post About Trees...Ever!

We are in the beginning stages of our backyard remodel. My cousin Bill is a tree cutter...if you need a good one and your in the Seattle area he's your man. He arrived this morning around 8am to cut down two trees and at least 10 other bushes and shrubs.

He was able to pull his truck into the easement so he didn't have to walk all the way up the hill to chip all the branches up. Seeing the big truck was the only part of the experience that Owen enjoyed.

Here's the first tree that he tackled. It provided a lot of privacy, but with it came a lot of shade. Our backyard is basically all moss so we wanted to open it up to as much sun as we could.

Here he is starting in on the first tree.


After cutting a few branches he would take them up to the chipper and push them through. It smelled so good in our backyard...like Christmas!


One tree down! I was so amazed at how much it really opened the backyard up. There is so much more light coming through. I love it!


The light isn't that good in this picture, but here is the area with the whole tree gone.

Here are some shrubs we had him remove. Before....

After! We are having all this done because our backyard is not level. Michael is going to build a retaining wall, level out the lawn, build a fence and put in a swing set for the boys. It's going to be great once it's all finished.

Here is where Owen was most of the time...watching Nemo. He was totally freaked out about all the noise.

Here's the second tree we had taken out. This is the area of the yard where the swing set is going so it needed to come out. The shrub on the right was also removed. I have a video of this tree falling so I'll be uploading that as well.

Here is what Jack was doing whenever he heard the chainsaw. He only cried once though.

After the tree feel I went in and showed Owen the video so he could see it. Then I took him over to the window so he could watch Bill saw it into manageable pieces.

Here's the tree all cut up and ready to be chipped.

This is how Jack looked when we were watching the chipper do it's job. It was really loud!

I took Owen out after I put Jack down for his nap and no matter what he just wouldn't watch the chipper. He was totally freaked out. I was hoping he would find it interesting, but he just does not like loud noises AT ALL.

Bill left us all the big wood chunks to use for firewood when we go camping over Labor Day.