Tim-berrrrr!

Give me the right tools and I can do anything.  And don't tell me I can't.

All summer, I've been after Romie to cut down the ugly maple tree that stands right in our way of walking from the pool area to the gardens at the back of the property. That isn't the reason I wanted him to take it down, but it really was in the way.  The biggest reason is because every single year it leafs out, looks good for a few weeks, then the leaves starts to turn yellow, get crispy brown on the edges, and starts dropping leaves until it's bare.  All by the end of July.

I have no idea what color the leaves on this particular tree are in fall, because it's lost them all by then.  Once in a great while, it will start to leaf out again, but most of the time, it doesn't.  I know it's diseased and I remember talking about this in my Master Gardener classes this spring, but I can't remember what it is right now.  All I know is I wanted the tree gone. It just wasn't worthy of the space it was occupying.

The tree had a 5-inch diameter trunk and was 22 feet tall, so I asked Romie to please take it down.  But he has a thing about pruning (he hates to do it, because he thinks it's hurting the growth) and he sure wasn't jumping to get the chain saw to cut one of his beloved trees down.  I, on the other hand, love to prune and while I love our trees as much as he does, I wasn't going to miss this maple one little bit.

For some reason, I just can't convince Romie that pruning is good for trees and shrubs.  On the rare occasions that he does prune anything, he doesn't take enough off to do any good.  It's like he thinks they're going to stop growing if you cut anything off of them.

So, this afternoon, I warned him that I was going to cut that maple tree down myself.  I know he didn't believe me, but he should know better after 35 years of being married to me. (Happy Anniversary to us, today!)

I grabbed my Corona Tools QuickSaw and proceeded to saw away at the trunk of the tree and in less than five minutes, the tree was down. An inch a minute! They don't call it a  QuickSaw for nothing! I call it awesome.

 

I walked back into the house and said, "That didn't take long."  He looked at me and said, "You did not just cut down that tree."

"Oh yes, I did."

It took him an hour before he could get up the courage to walk out and see that the tree wasn't there anymore.  In the meantime, I even cleaned up the mess. He's not real happy with me right now, but he'll get over it. :-)