Goodbye, Bradford Pear!

My parents came to visit this past weekend from Georgia.  Whenever they come here, we always have a long list of power tools or devices that we ask them to bring with them.  And they generously always bring them.

This time, they brought along a chain saw and other various cutting mechanisms so that we could remove the Bradford pear tree from our front yard.  This tree was about 10 years old, probably would not last much longer, and dramatically blocked the view of our house from the street.  For some reason, the developers put it right in the middle of our front yard in the middle of our house.

Here is what our house looked like before the chainsaw:

Here is what it looks like now:

I think Jason really enjoyed using the chainsaw.  I was admittedly jealous that I could not participate.  This is exactly the kind of activity that I usually really, really enjoy.  But, alas, "pregnancy" and "chainsaw" do not belong in the same sentence...

The first limb comes down.

I think maybe we pruned that tree a bit lopsided...

Jason likes the chainsaw.

The last limb comes down.

I think the yard is going to look great once we get the drainage problem fixed and some sod put in.  Our yard is really a total mess right now.  You can't tell from the pictures, but I'm pretty sure that none of that green stuff is actually grass.

They took that tree out in a couple hours on Friday night.  On Saturday, Mom took me to get pedicures (which were FABULOUS), then we went to eat lunch out together.  By the time we got home, Dad and Jason were drenched in sweat, slightly sunburned, VERY dusty and had taken down three smaller trees in our yard (silver maples that were planted about 8 feet from our house - not a good idea) and had somehow taken out a gigantic tree from our backyard (that surely must have been at least 40 or 50 feet high).  Jason said it involved an extension ladder and a chainsaw... I just don't want to know the details...

While we hate to kill trees, we don't want very large trees growing close to our house.  The large tree in the backyard was coming very close to touching our house with 3 or 4 very large limbs.

With my dad's chainsaw and labor, we saved ourselves about $500 of tree removal by professionals, I'm sure.  Today, we had someone grind all the stumps.  It feels so good to have this taken care of.

Thanks, Dad!