Blast from the Past #3

Well, it seems like I'm on a roll with these 'Blast from the Past' posts.

With #3 I'm going back to the cedars that were around the front of the house. The trees were left up for Halloween, but about a week or so into November '99 we started taking them down.

All-n-all we took at four cedars that were dieing and two that were already dead.

Here are some pics from a VERY long day.

This is the front of the house before we started.



The two main cedars are as tall as the house and the auction company had to cut some of the limbs just so the porch could be accessed.

This is what they looked like in the 30's.

The person you see in the following picture is my Father-in-Law.

Not really sure what he's doing, but I think he is checking the ropes and chaines that will be used.

Notice how, even from the yard, you can not see the set of windows on the right side of the second floor.

It is a shame that these had to come down, but they were damaging the roof. Along with this there had been a highly invasive vine growing all over these trees and it had attached to the house and was growing into the soffits.

Not a great picture, but this is me and my two nieces.




They are 'helping' me get the come-along ready.

We are using this thing to make sure that the tree falls where we want it to.

While I was doing this the F-in-L was climbing up into the tree to secure the line that would go to the come-along.

With a shout of "TIMBER" from the nieces the first cedar came down right where it was suppose to.

And there she lies!!

Do you see how high up the base of the trunk is? It looks even with the porch soffit but it's actually a couple feet higher.

For the first time in a long time the sun was able to shine into those windows!

Now the fun really began...dismantling the first one.

It was somewhat of a family affair.

Along with myself, the nieces and the F-in-L you can see my brother in the center wearing the dark shirt.



One of the more interesting aspects of all this work, just like what we had already done in the yard, were the gawkers.

I didn't get any pictures of them, but we had a ton of people drive by, and walk by, to see what we were doing. I guess it had just been such a long time since anyone had seen work done around the place they just had to see it to believe it. It didn't matter what we were doing in the yard - the gawkers just seemed to know it and came by to have a look.

Just about done...the trunk has been de-branched.

For those of you who might be interested, all the trunks we took down eventually went to my brother's house in the country. They have been used for all sorts of things: supports for a tree house and a clothes line to name a couple.










And there it is - SUNSHINE!!!

Everybody sing!! "Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy...".

Okay - enough John Denver.

We are now getting ready to take down the next one at the front.

And there goes number two.









Shortly after number two came down my father showed up along with his handy-man.

We still had two living ones and two dead ones to go.

Here is the next one to come down.

You can also see part of the dead one that was next to it.

That's my dad scrunched down looking up at the tree as it starts to fall.

Annette's dad is leaned up next to the dead one in the background.


Clean-up of the last two living ones are in the next picture. Guess I got the picture out of order...oh well.

This is my dad and his handy-man cleaning up the brush.

You can barely see the trunk of the other live tree that had to come down - it’s to the right.









While we were taking down the other trees the nieces were hard at work cleaning up the remains of the two in the front.

"We are women - hear us roar!"

I think the nieces enjoyed riding the trunks out of the yard more than they liked watching them fall.



The rest of the pics are of the last two living trees to come down. Sorry, but the pics are not necessarily in order.

This was the last of the live trees to fall.

This tree was absolutely HUGE!






The tree was so big that the herb garden fills the foot print that the tree had. The bird bath sits on top of what's left of the trunk.

This was the third tree.

We are in the middle of removing most of the lower branches. We found out that it helps to do this before cutting the tree down.











Here's Annette's dad getting ready to remove one of the trees.

Not really sure which one though - DOH!!
















And when it was all over the entire southeastern side of the house was bathed in light.

First the first time in what must have been many, many years there was on unobstructed view of the front entry to the porch.

Man was it DIRTY!!!

Our youngest niece took pity on the poor house and decided to clean it.

Too bad she wasn't taller!!













Well, that's enough for tonight - I hope you enjoyed the visit.

Till next time....

Cheers!
Larry ~