The rape of the Earth continues

You'll remember the stories of our taking out a tree that wasn't especially happy and was a fire hazard growing too close to the house. It's not fun to remove trees but when they might cause problems they're not worth the risk.

We had a juniper growing just outside the family room (even closer than the pine). The pine tree we took out had grown over to the juniper so they they had been occupying the same space for a while. Junipers, like pines, are rather flammable and after last October we were getting nervous. So we said good-bye to the juniper.

Here's a little movie of Lumberjack Jerry taking one of its trunks down.

I don't like hearing my voice. My single word, "yeah," makes me cringe. Lordy, I sound like my father! Lordy!

Juniper trunks are solid. I worked on it with our little chainsaw. It took forever to get through it. I shredded the juniper. The green parts of the juniper went through the shredder like waste through Jasmin's trap.

And the rape continues...

We had some unsightly juniper bushes around the base of the pine. Those got taken out, too. (Hey, we've got most of the too flammable stuff away from the house!) Jerry cut them out and I put them through the shredder.

There was a concrete ring around the pine's base. Over the years as it leaned further and further away from the ash, it did some major demolition on the ring. Part got mashed into the ground. The other side was lifted out of the ground. We now have more debris that can't be put out for the weekly trash pickup. I suppose we can take this and the big pieces of the pine and juniper to the trash transfer station for recycling.

The base of the pine tree

We're going to have to fix this area up and have a nice place to sit and drink our mint juleps. There is a lot of dead ivy that liked living in the shade of the pine to clean up. And years of pine needles. What should we do with the area? AstroLawn?