Last Wednesday night we had a storm come through and here was the sight that greeted us Thursday morning.  It looked like another branch had broke off of one of the flowering pears out front.

It turned out to be a bit more than that.  The whole tree, except for that one branch on the right, had fallen over into the other tree.

Sue and I suited up to get the clean up started.

And it became obvious that there was a lot of tree to deal with.

This is the broken off portion leaning into the other tree.

We decided the whole tree had to go as the remaining branch was way off center.  We started chopping it up with my trusty little 14" chainsaw.

Temps in the upper 80s didn't help.

 We got a lot done Thursday and here is what we still had facing us Friday morning.

There were a lot of leaves and branches.  I'd cut them off and Sue pulled them out and stacked them.  Then I started hauling them over to our 'dump' behind the tennis courts.

Friday was cooler so the work was a bit easier. Most of the smaller branches were gone and we'd kept all the wood 2" or more in diameter to cut up as firewood for Bri.

The lighter wood on the left is what broke off. The dark stuff in the center is rot and the reason it all came down.

We used a cable-pull to extract the fallen branches that got imbedded in the other tree.

A good part of that tree got pushed in.

On Saturday we just had to deal with the big stuff.

The chainsaw blade broke and Bri ran out and got a new one.

The sharp chain made it much easier.

That log on the right was the one remaining branch that we decided to also cut down.

Here Bri and Sue are loading up our pickup for the first haul to Bri's place.

Cody came over to help too.

Cody got a ride around the front yard by Sue.

It sure looks different.

Only the old stump is left.

I hear that Chris has declined the bigger logs.  They'd be a pain to split by hand!

But we got it all cleaned up before Easter.

We're sure the remaining tree won't last long either.

But speaking of Easter - check out the next email!