Another job well done!!

Someone asked me this week "What big project do you have this week?".  Well at the time of the question, we didn't have a project.  But on Wednesday we hired someone to come and trim (like they do here in France) the silver birch tree in our back yard and to cut the hedges.  He came on Thursday and cut the tree.  It was really quite interesting to watch him as he climbed the tree and how he cut the limbs.

Our tree this summer when we first visited the house.

Before

After

We decided to keep the wood to use in the fireplace.  He told us that it would take about a year for it to dry for use.  Mike cut the smallest branches off of the big branches and put them in trash bags.  I then cut the bigger parts of the big branches into kindling size pieces and the biggest parts into small logs.  The man had already cut the big trunks into logs for us.

Cutting the smallest branches.

Kindling in the plastic boxes and small logs.

11 of these bags went to the dump this morning.

Our wood pile!!

It took him about 2 hours to cut the tree.  It took us about 5 hours to finish our part.  In the afternoon we worked in a misty rain.  By the time we finished we were soaked.  But at least it wasn't cold out.

See the tree monkey?

He came back this morning to cut the hedges.  This took him a little bit longer.  Probably about 4 hours.  Normally we would do this ourselves.  But we could tell that they hadn't been done in a while.  Now that it has been done, we can trim them ourselves.

Before

After

Before

After

After he finished cutting we picked up the clippings.  This morning I took 11 bags of cuttings to the dump.  Tomorrow there will be 18 more bags that will go.  It looks so nice now that it is all done.  Now if only the aches and pains would go away as fast as it took to do the work.

Before (A path that runs behind our house)

After

 

Time to relax for the evening.