Hurricane Preparedness

This is the tree we built our house around back in 2000. It used to be a vibrant, shade providing tree. Unfortunately, we didn't understand how important it was to not disturb the ground below the canopy of the tree, so 5 years later, no leaves this Spring. It started shedding limbs last year during the Hurricanes. This year, it's completely dead and we (and our neighbors) thought it'd be a good idea to bring her down.

We started with the limbs first. As you can see, we are experts and we dropped this limb exactly where we wanted to drop it... 2ft from the front door!

The guys cutting our tree is John Thompson. He works with me at Shell and cuts down trees for fun on his off days. He did a great job. It gives me chills to think I was gonna try to do this by myself.

It's hard to see with this pic, but I'm on the other end of a rope tied to John's Chevy pickup. The tree is leaning in this pic and is about to go down. About this time, I'm smoking the tires on John's Chevy pickup, making sure this half of the tree lands in the yard and not in our living room.

More pics to come. Gotta go to work.