Timber!

Going...going...gone

It's a helluva job, I reckon, going up and down in a bucket with chainsaws and ropes, securing limbs so they don't fall where you don't want them to, buzzing them off the trunk, finally reducing a towering tree to a mere stump in the backyard. I don't think I'd want to do such a job, as an accident in that environment is probably not going to be minor. If you're reading this, and you're one of those guys, then you've got some thoracis.

I hate to lose trees, and if I had my way, I'd live in the middle of a forest rather than surrounded by grass, but sometimes, a tree just has to go. Years ago — sometime in the mid 90s, I guess — a hurricane came through and set one of the big trees in the backyard to leaning. It was otherwise still healthy, so the tree people we called cabled it to a nearby poplar, which helped keep it upright and stable for a good couple of decades. Lately, though, water running through the yard has eroded the soil at the roots to the point the tree has been looking too precarious for comfort. So today it came down. Hated to lose it. Hated to spend the money. But I'd have really hated for it to fall on the neighbors and/or take out my storage shed out back.

Well, then again, neighbors can always be replaced....