Story about a tree

Due to some of the crazy weather we've been having this winter, one of the large limbs of our maple tree in the front yard broke and was hanging down into our street, threatening our neighbors ability to leave their houses. Oops! Of course, our driveway is on the side of our house and we NEVER look out front so one of our nice neighbors came over a few weeks ago to politely ask us to have it cut down.

Our house is just to the right of this photo (the mailbox and lamppost are ours -
the tree we had to cut down is the big one just behind the mailbox)

Allen got an estimate and scheduled someone to come over to cut down the limb. I insisted that he get another estimate to compare prices. Luckily, one of my coworker's husbands owns his own landscaping business and John came to check out our tree as well. He beat the first company's price by $300!!

Unfortunately, he also brought to our attention that the tree was dying from the inside out. Sad times. So he suggested we cut the entire tree down or else we'd end up spending $600 every year or so to cut a limb off. In the long run it just made more sense to spend $1000 cutting the whole tree down.

We were able to keep some of the tree for firewood next year and John also brought us some ready-to-go firewood for this year. (In case you didn't know - and I didn't - firewood has to dry out for a season or else it won't burn right)

After an afternoon of Allen chopping firewood like a lumberjack, more firewood than we can go through in two years and some IcyHot later, we still had too many logs in our front yard.

This is what our backyard looks like!

Allen posted "free firewood" on Craigslist and our free labor picked up all the wood today! In fact, the men who came were helping out an elderly neighbor with a wood stove that was out of firewood but couldn't afford to pay for the wood. So that made us feel all warm & fuzzy for helping them out!

We're planning to allow one of the sprouts from the old maple to grow up in its place. Hopefully it will recreate the overhang of its daddy-tree. (Our old tree used to meet our neighbors in the middle of the street for a very Boulevard-type feel).

So that's how we made the best of our tree situation!