First we printed a canvas of the Jordan River Temple where Steve and I were married. Phill Monson was kind enough and let us use one of his awesome photos. The colors are beautiful! Thanks Phill!
Next we got our fence in. We got the fence posts the last week of September right before I went back to work. Then the following week in October they came and put in the panels and gates. It's awesome! We love having a little more privacy and of course for safety reasons, we know little kids can't get out of the backyard. They asked Steve where he wanted the locks at on the gates, and he told them up high so littler kids can't reach it. Good call honey! Now we know when we send Nyles out to play in the backyard he is safe back there :)
Fence posts left side.
Fence posts right side.
Putting in the panels and gates now.
Right side done!
Left side done!
The backside of the left side.
Nyles is so happy for the fence too!
I found this on Google. It's still showing the "old" house and lanscape, before we moved in.
Notice how everything is pretty overgrown.
The fence on both sides.
Steve cutting some weeds out.
The trees would shed "runners" all over the place too so we cut those out.
Nyles helping w/ his dump truck to move the weeds to our pile.
Carter taking it easy (chewing on his binky strap) while we work out in the yard.
This is the pile we made from all the weeds and bushes we took out. It was a lot!
Yeah the weeds are gone! At least for now :)
After taking out the weeds and overgrown bushes, I kept feeling like we needed to have our trees looked at again. Steve had a couple people come in the Spring when we moved in, but I wasn't ready to cut them down yet. Steve joked about wanting to cut them down so he wouldn't have to rake up all the leaves this Fall, and I wasn't going to cut down our trees just for that ;) We've had some pretty good winds, and every time it blows I honestly worry "What if the trees fall down on the house?" They are twice the size of the house and Nyles room is right in front of them. Then when my parents were here about a month ago, we had some good size branches come down on the patio after some wind we had. My dad looked at one and it was black on the inside and he said the tree must be dying. And then the last couple weeks we've had even more branches fall down, in addition to the normal leaves.
So I looked up people who were actually "Arborists" to come look at the trees. I wanted someone who was hoping to save the trees, rather than just cut them down so they can make money. After looking at the trees, all of them stated that the trees had hit the end of their lifespan and were dying essentially. All of them said the same thing, "it's not a matter of if, but when the trees come down." So after hearing it and really "feeling" we needed to cut them down, we hired a company to do so. The guys we hired were a little cheaper than the others, and most importantly, they could do it in just a couple days, instead of a couple weeks. I really felt the urgency that we needed to get them down, and quick! Here are some pics.
We ended up cutting down 7 Cottonwood trees and 1 Pine Tree.
There goes the guy climbing up the first tree.
They actually took our pile of shrubs from the week before and put it through a wood chipper, since they were in the way. We were planning to wait until the Sandy City cleanup day, which was this week, but they did it for us, so that was awesome!
Climbing higher.
Taking down the first tree after cutting off the branches.
Nyles was in heaven watching the tree guys work all day.
You'll notice the inside of the trees. All of them looked like this. They really were sick. They all had slim flux, a bacterial disease, on the inside. This was killing the trees as well, in addition to the fact that they don't have a long lifespan, only about 30 years.
All trees down but one. They were tired after a long day, so they said they'd come back in a couple days to finish it.
Steve and Carter checking out the lonesome tree.
Steve then went and got poison and poisoned the stumps so it would kill the roots and stop further "runners" from growing. There were a lot of leaves that came down, and we didn't have to clean up most of them. That made Steve happy :)
The second set of guys who came to take down the last and biggest tree.
They figured it was probably the original tree and the other 6 were "runners" from it.
Taking down the branches and cutting the truck as he went. The guy brings up a chainsaw w/ him the whole time. Ya, they have to be pretty strong to do this job. :)
Nyles next to the biggest stump.
The stump removal guy came today. Finally after almost 2 weeks we had the trees officially out! We've had some winds again since they took down the first set of trees, and man are we glad they are gone! It's a little strange not having the natural "barrier" between us and the neighbors, but we are getting lot of sun, which is awesome now that it's not as hot during the day.
He ended up cutting down the little pine tree as well, since it was going to get run over by his machine in order to grind the stumps anyway. We also had to remove a section of our fence between us and the Andersons behind us in order to bring the machine in. Steve took it out and put the fence back up after he was done. It worked out better this way instead of trying to climb over the retaining wall and breaking it further.
Taking out the big tree stump. It took the longest by far!
Now moving on to the smaller stumps.
The stumps are officially gone! Now we will have to figure out what we want to do up there, most likely in the Spring. We're killing parts of the lawn as well since it's farmers grass. We'll reseed it in the Spring as well. Our yard actually feels bigger now w/out all the huge trees there.
We kept the wood from the bigger pine tree. We can use it for firewood at the cabin or something.
The wood from the Cottonwood trees they couldn't sell it or reuse it though, since it had the bacteria in it---so sad.
We have lot of nice mulch now though. We just need to figure out what to plant up there.
Taking out the trees definitely wasn't planned or expected, especially in our budget, but we're glad we did it. I feel certain that we would have had more trouble from them down the road, and most likely would have cost even more. I'm grateful for the impressions we get from the Holy Ghost to warn us and protect us. It truly is a blessing. The Lord really does love us and watches out for us. :)
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