let there be light

Jonna — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:37:47 +0000

First off, I’ve got to tell you that I’m not a big trees and forest gloom kind of girl. I prefer open vistas, lots of sky and sun – lots of sun. I’m not sure why I thought buying a house with a huge banyan tree for a neighbor was a good idea but it was a lot smaller 2 years ago. It has grown and grown and recently I realized that it completely crossed our yard, adding lots of gloom and shade. See how those go together for me? I could never live up under big trees, they give me the creeps at night and the lack of light is depressing. Mimi and I once left Vancouver Island a week early because we couldn’t find anywhere to park the RV that wasn’t up under the gloomy trees.

So, I wanted the part over my yard cut back to the wall. It’s not my tree, it actually lives on the wall between two of the neighbors yards but it covers a good portion of the block. It’s really tall, the area is crowded and I didn’t want anyone getting hurt nor did I want to buy my neighbors a new roof. So, I’ve been on a search for an experienced tree guy to cut it back. I found one, through a friend of a friend, that had good references. He lives on the outskirts of the city and has no phone so I called the lady he works for on Thursdays and she had him call me on her phone. He came over and looked at the tree and said it wasn’t a problem, he’d cut it back.

Yesterday was the big day. First off, the exterminators were here in the morning so all the critters had to be taken away and I had to stand guard on the fish ponds. That went well and then Manuel and two helpers came to do the tree. He went up with just a rope and a machete and by the end of the day there is a quarter of that huge tree missing and sun has returned to my yard. It does look a bit odd with a chunk out of it, kind of like a pie chart. It will leaf out again though and I don’t really care anyway because… I have light again!

I took a bunch of pictures, the one that I didn’t remember to take was a shot of the whole tree before the cutting. Oh well, just fill in the blanks.

The first cuts with the machete

One down

farther out

a pause to clear up

moving higher

the big one starts to fall

lowering it carefully

Mimi surveys the missing chunk of tree

They chopped all the wood into fire sized pieces, loaded all the branches into our truck and Mimi drove it to their pueblo. They dropped off the firewood at Manuel’s grandmother’s house so she can make tamales and dumped the rest near his house. It was a big job and I was very happy with how careful they were and how efficient, plus they cleaned up really well. Total cost? $2500 pesos or a little less than $190US. Not cheap but a job well done.

Work begins on our yard after Carnival, the rock is coming out, more planters are being built and I hope to have a yard I can putter in with more space (and now more light) for plants.

blah...blah...blah... Ginger! » banyan

let there be light