Tree Removal

At long last, two scary and dying spruce trees at the front corner of the house are gone. You can check out a recent "before" photo here. We tried to have this work done before the hurricane, but since it involved a massive coordination of utility companies – National Grid, Verizon, and Comcast –  to come take down and then reattach wires so the crane could get in and out, the work was postponed until Election Day. Seems the utilities were a little busy last week.

Speaking of the crane, it just barely fit in the driveway, and the kids and I spent some time mesmerized by the swaying pendulum of the giant hook in the front yard:

Getting Verizon and Comcast to do this was unbelievably frustrating. (National Grid, you guys were great.) Between the two of us, Kirk and I spent hours on the phone, and we lost several days' morale to sheer frustration in dealing and re-dealing with their scheduling errors and utter incompetence. I don't have the energy to go into any more detail, and if you've dealt with them you already have horror stories of your own, I'm sure. It was enough to make us consider going Amish. Or at least incomunicado. In the end, we cut ties with Verizon entirely and threw our lot in with Comcast for internet, as their attempts to rectify their many errors was marginally better than Verizon's devastatingly poor service all around.

Anyway, we are relieved to have those trees down, and not a moment too soon, as we are now in the midst of another blustery nor'easter, this time with a little snow to pretty things up.  

You can see the stumps above. The guys from Cicoria do outstanding work, and for a reasonable price. They were fast, and you can't even tell they were here--the maple tree that was tangled up in the spruces is still there, and looks completely untouched. they even rehooked our cable for us so we'd be sure to have it to watch election returns without dealing with another call to Comcast. They'll be back to grind the stumps later this week, and we'll keep the shavings for composting, or maybe litter for the chicken coop.

Here's what it looks like now:

That big, beautiful maple is still quite close to the house, but it is healthy and strong, and in the summer it keeps Tiegan's room and the three-season porch nice and cool with its shade. Next spring and summer we'll watch the new shadow patterns in the front yard – I'm hoping that we'll be able to expand the orchard a bit where one of the spruces used to be. I'm thinking plums...