the tree is down

A couple days ago I noticed that one of our trees by the driveway was tilting toward the fence. That particular tree had been dead for a while now, probably before we moved in the house almost 6 years ago, but it had always been standing up tall just fine until a few days ago. The people we got the house from planted the trees 30 years ago and apparently many of them are too close to each other and that's one of the main problems.

So we tried to call our tree guy and for some odd reason couldn't get a hold of him, and then we tried to call the city, but then it's Sunday so no one is really answering the phone.

We decided to get it down ourselves. I believe studying physics all the way through high school paid off. We calculated our forces against the weight of the tree, the distances between things, and dug a bit at the base of the tree (and saw that its roots were bad already anyhow). We then "rocked" the tree up straight, and then down. Yes we did.

The nice neighbors came and talked to John and was surprised by the fact that we got the tree down without hitting anything. I was surprised myself, actually. John then cut the tree with his little chain saw. The whole thing was a bit crazy, but at least the tree came down ok and no one and nothing was hurt.

Dude, we pulled down a tree!