The Fallen Tree
Greetings to everyone.
Very early the Monday morning before Christmas 2016, we had a little wind whip through the neighborhood. It took down a forty plus year old Blue Spruce which stood some thirty feet tall on the southwest side of our lawn. Strange the wind did not topple any other trees in the neighborhood.
Even more interesting, the tree fell in the only way possible so that nothing else was damaged. If it had fallen even a few degrees in any other direction, fences, other trees, cars or roofs may have been damaged. Thank you, Father!
While we were collecting bids to have the tree removed, another more powerful and longer-lasting wind storm swept through the Denver area. No point in collecting bids now; everyone was going to be busy.
It took the tree guys four trips to get rid of the tree and more than three weeks. The weather played a little in the three week part.
Xavier watched it all from behind the picture window inside the house. The first crew arrived and removed the branches. It took a couple of hours even with chainsaws.
The second crew pulled the thirty foot log off the lawn with a crane. Xavier and I watched from outside on the porch and in the falling snow.
The third crew spent two hours grinding and removing half of the stump. Again, Xavier watched from inside the house. The forth crew finished the stump removal while Xavier was in school.
Xavier watched the first crew with the stump grinder for about :45 minutes, then dropped out of the chair and ran to build his own stump grinder. You can see in the picture above (taken through the picture window) above the grinder he watched and modeled his own after.
He cobbled together his big Tonka dump truck and Lightning McQueen and another Tonka car.
Once he built his grinder, he used other toys to acts as tree roots for him to grind away at. You can see his recorder acting the part of a tree root in the picture above. Also, you can see a tree from his dinosaur world set acting the tree roll.