Warning: Please do not attempt this at home.
Now that the pesky warning is outta the way, I wanted to share with you how my boyfriend and his buddy Kent took down a Magnolia tree in our front yard. It all began with a dream. That’s right. Just call me the Martin Luther King Jr. of landscaping. You see, I dream of a front yard that is the Halle Barry of exteriors. But the ground is severely sloped, the green stuff is all weeds, the trees are ill-placed, and the flower beds are non-existant. After formulating a plan & a design (soon-to-be-shared), I convinced my hot stud of a boyfriend to start our front yard renovation….beginning with tree removal.
This Magnolia tree was very tall (which means that it is very old) and is very sparse. The previous homeowners had chopped the lower branches off and the upper branches had never really filled out. (enter boob job joke here).
So Jeremy tied a long rope to the trunk of the tree (about halfway up) and convinced Kent to chainsaw the sucker. Note dangerous item #1 – the tree could possibly be taller than the yard is long. Note dangerous #2 – traffic is not rare.
The plan was simple. Kent cuts, Jeremy pulls…
Jeremy runs away from the falling tree.
The tree lands in the yard.
Thankfully the plan worked. I am really glad because good boyfriends are hard to find. Especially ones that look so darn tootin cute in camo shorts.
Dangerous item #3 – boys with chainsaws.
And while the boys pretended to be BoneSaw assessed the situation, I, like any blogger, walked around taking several pictures of…well, everything.
Dangerous item #4 – safety googles, what?
Check out that green fungus growth! Which reminds me of a joke…a mushroom walks into a bar and hits on the prettiest girl in the joint. She says “Listen buddy, you’re just not my type”. The mushroom says “Why not? I am a fungi!” 🙂 Bada bing.
When the guys were ten minutes into the job of cutting the branches off the trunk, it began to rain.
But the rain was no threat to these boys. They loaded up the back of Kent’s four-wheel drive truck and hauled the branches back to the woods. Dangerous item #5 – Jeremy is halfway in the truck to “hold in the branches” when they go over the hill in the back yard.
Overall it was really fun to watch. A little nerve wracking…or a lot. Literally I was shaking in my New Balances. I had visions of the tree smashing through the house or Jeremy getting sqwished like a boob during a mammogram.
So now that you heard all about our tree-falling adventure, do you have any you would like to share? Maybe something went a wry? Or maybe you had daymares of tragedy or destruction? Or maybe it went all as planned but your boys aren’t hardcore rednecks and you had to shell out big money for tree removal? Do tell 🙂
You are so funny! I love reading your blog! I live in Georgia too (you did say your house is in Gerogia, right?). I’m glad everything went well with the tree removal. Oh, also your pictures look great! What kind of camera do you use?
Thats ironic your timing on this post. We did the same thing 2 weekends ago. except, well we had slightly bigger trees and also a little more help. Oh and a gigantic dumpster instead of the woods. We did the whole string thing too. Ive posted my videos on my flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/heidisemet/sets/72157619695408368/
too funny girl! so what’s the plan with the yard, now? =)
Haha I like how you took a ton of pictures – Tony always makes fun of me for doing that. It looks great!
I felt bad when we took the trees out of our front yard (but really, they were hiding the house, and they were just as bedraggled as yours) but something as simple as that can transform a yard. luckily, we had the pros do ours – since they were pines well over 60ft tall…
They are just so totally boys!
So now that you heard all about our tree-falling adventure, do you have any you would like to share?
I totally expected you to insert ” “wood” like to share ” in the above sentence of your post- haha. You’re so funny and glad everything went so safe!
Ha ha – this was a good one! Sounds SO like my Hubs – he can do anything. No matter what.
We’ll see about that one when we’re ready to build our dream home ; – )
I use my redneck hubby to remove snakes that are to close to the house
you are hysterical! you always make me smile 🙂
i love all the detailed photos 🙂
This actually reminds me of the finale of the $250k challenge show on HGTV last night. Carter, the guest judge, is a very green person. One of the couples chopped down a tree in their front yard and he commented that if you are going to cut down a tree, it is your duty to plant another tree. For some reason, this post reminds me of that.
Mmmm-mmm! Forget the tree…cut me off somma that hawtness. Manly men doing some lumberjacking. This is why I love reading your blog.
You told my favorite joke ever. Now I love your blog even more 🙂
Amanda – you have no idea how close I was to doing that…let’s just say that Angelina and her brother were never that close 🙂
Hi Lyzz – absolutely! I am a big supporter of the ‘plant a tree’ idea – in fact, I was really excited about the prospect that this beast was coming down because it meant that I could put more than one plant in it’s place!
XO – Katie
I would like to put in a request for some more hot redneck boy action on this blog…move over critter of the week, mama has a new fave 😉
Aww Jeremy is so sweet- but I bet he loved every manly minute of it!! Great pictures- especially the tree in motion!
We are in the middle of Operation Backyard Re-Do so I know a thing or two or three about cuttin’ down trees. But I think cutting them down is the easy part. Getting rid of the 1 inch stump which is left over is the hard part.
We are using an axe to chop it up as much as possible then fill it with soil. We are stumped at the real answer.
This frightens me because we have several trees we want to remove. Oh dear.
Hahaha, I knew it! You totally should have, I read it like that the first time and then was all “What the heck? She didn’t say “wood!!!”
GREAT post! Great pictures, commentary, detail – thanks for the chuckles and fun read! I’m glad it turned out ok. I don’t like seeing my hubby work with a chainsaw, but he does, thankfully, wear safety glasses. He heard me laughing while I was reading this and came over to read it too and laughed out loud too! Thanks!
Umm, no tree felling adventures for us, but my boyfriend did try to kill me with a big boulder. It was 1100 lbs. I know this b/c they weighed it when we bought it. He couldn’t wait for the guy with a bobcat, so he moved it by hand with a moneystick (don’t ask). Then he rolled it down a hill to stabilize our bank. Would have worked perfectly except that it rolled one too many times and crunched our neighbors fence. Then we had to try to get it back up the hill. We did this, but I can’t remember exactly how, but I do remember that he tied me to the rock at some point. Now we call it the “divorce rock”.
Another Jersey girl in the south here…but I’ve been under the impression that magnolia trees are sacred down here and must not be touched! Kudos for charming those men into taking yours out. Can’t wait to see what’s going in there instead.
BTW, what is that boy doing wearing a Red Sox hat? Are you sure that’s a redneck?
Why would you cut this down? This is so disrespectful to life.
Well as much as I hate cutting down any tree…eventually this one would have been in the way of a grander landscape plan. We did plant a couple hundred plants in this yard so hopefully the tree will feel honored by his sacrifice 🙂
xo – kb