Monday, November 25, 2013

It'a Raining and other Mundane Matters Written Nobember 21, 2013

It is a cold rain....pretty heavy and 49 °.

I slept until 4 AM.  My method of stopping coffee after breakfast seems to be helping.  I started back on glucosamine because my knees were telling me to.

Yesterday we began another project out side.  Since the bad ice storm and  tornadoes of a few years ago, we are very conscious of trees near power lines and the house.  We decided to have a dead Elm along the drive taken out and the lop-sided Ash tree on the east side of the drive.....then DH said to get the other Elm at the front of the drive while they were here. Elms are the blight of any homeowner...these were what we called Chinese Elms but I think are really Siberian  Elms.....whatever you call them (and I have called them worse!)  They draw elm beetles  and Japanese beetles and constantly drop small  twigs and limbs.

The utility company had recently limbed one of the old, hollow soft maples along the road in front of the house  and left it looking extremely lopsided and ugly even when in leaf....out  it came too.  They ground all the stumps and even got a couple of old stumps we had left from previous removals....So, 4 large trees, 6 stumps and  complete  cleanup, even down to raking and I get all the chips and sawdust I want, total charge $1800.  We thought that was very reasonable (of course, once again, there went my new sofa!)  I hope we have a large load of calves  to sell and I can still squeeze in some inside things.......time will tell.

I took pictures through the rain this morning.  The guys were going to come clean up today but the rain will stop that.

This is taken from the dining room porch and shows the elms and the ash tree removal



The old damaged maple  out front,




You can just see the edge of the chips out by the cellar in front of the sheds,



I think we will  run some errands  while it is raining.  Walmart left part of  my things bagged on the carousel and also made a double charge on an item.  The clerk made two other double charges on the ticket but caught those and  corrected them......we will be avoiding her in the future.  Makes me wonder how many errors we have had in the past; I don't pay close attention....I will in the future.


8 comments:

  1. Glenda, I hate to see the old trees become damaged requiring removal and I'm sure you do too!....:)JP

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    1. I do hate it but these were not good trees. In fact, there were very few good trees from the previous owner. We have planted a red oak, pink oak, swamp oak and the red maple and my favorite, the river birch....I almost forgot another good one, an Amur Maple. Better late than never.

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  2. MIssed your posts for the past few days. You'd think we would be less busy as winter comes on rather than the other way around.

    I like the opened up look around your house. We have that vining euonymous and it is a nuisance. Watch that trunk, it may not rot, just put out new suckers unless you sprayed it.

    I would like to removed all shrubbery around our house but it is hard to decide to permanently remove 50 year old boxwoods even though they are planted too close. I guess 50 years ago SIL and MIL didn't imagine how big they might grow. I prune all the way to the stump on the back side to keep them off the house and they grow right back. May get more drastic this January.

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    1. I will watch that euonymous stump closely and spray it if I see even a hint of green on it!

      I don't know yet what I will do with the bare foundation. I have all winter to think about it. The previous owner did the same thing to her new house....planted everything right on the foundation; I think they can't stand to see that bare distance between the new smaller plants and the foundation.

      I is hard to remove old growth plants but we did it!

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  3. I'm with Jean - that euonymous stump will sprout. Bet you wish you'd had the guys grind out that stump too. That's how I finally got rid of a monster (non-blooming) wisteria at my old house.

    You are really doing a bang up job of cleaning up outside. Actually $1800 for all that is pretty much in line. And lord knows you'll never be short of firewood for years to come!

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    1. Kris, it is cheap for our location comparing it to previous work we have had done.

      We didn't keep the wood.....no log splitter and I knew the helpmate would not be interested in splitting it. We have on hand lots of good, split, aged oak which is far superior wood. I do hope someone gets the wood; I told the men that it made me sick to see that laying there knowing someone somewhere could use it.

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  4. I'm sure you're relieved to have all of those trees removed.

    Have a lovely Thanksgiving ~ FlowerLady

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    1. We are more relaxed about storms now. I will do some replanting but,hopefully, in better locations.

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