chainsaw aftermath

Last Thursday evening Jon and I were enjoying a leisurely dinner, when we heard a knock on our side door. Our neighbor was at the door with a chainsaw and wanted to help Jon cut down our two overgrown arborvitaes. Jon agreed and they got to work immediately (who can resist freely volunteered help afterall?!).

before

For the next hour loud chainsaw noise and gas fumes filled the air. They cut down two overgrown, 15 feet arborvitaes and left the backyard strewn with branches.

The following day we spent a few hours bagging the lighter branches and stacking the larger logs. We ended up making multiple trips to Lowes because we kept running out of lawn and leaf bags. All in all, we used 27 bags to dispose of the tree! All of this yard waste will be turned into free wood chips and compost that we can get for free next summer.

In addition to getting rid of the trees, we ended up getting multiple loads of compost from the city on Saturday morning to smooth over our bumpy, dead sod (dug up from the garden spot) and we planted some grass seed on top of the new dirt. Hopefully it will fill in nicely in the next few weeks!

after

We're glad to have the trees gone and to have another item left off of our list, but it's a bit disappointing to have so much open space left. I hit the big fall sale at Bordines and bought a cute little Snowball Viburnum to fill the space the arborvitaes left. It's not going to provide much privacy from the neighbors for a few years, so we might add a trellis or two with some vining plants behind it next spring. We'll see.