When Things Go According to Plan: Tree Edition

You’ll recall a few weeks ago, a big part of the huge silver maple in my backyard fell down, knocking out my power. (Actually, it looks like that’s already been 1.5 months!) In the aftermath, we looked around at various tree services, finally settling on Hidden Hills Tree Service. They gave us a *much* better estimate and committed to cutting and splitting the wood from the tree for us as well. (When you burn wood and have a big tree fall down on your property, you might as well get some BTUs out of it, right?)

Even then, we still had to arrange for the power company to come and drop the power line so the work could be done, and that took much more finessing than we anticipated. They’re busy people in the summer, it seems. There was one morning that they had open until mid-August, so it was then or much later.

Thankfully, the stars all aligned for that one day to work. However, it was also yesterday, the day I had to be in Orono for a library development day. Denisa’s gone to Slovakia with the kids, so all of this would have to happen without anyone there to make sure it all went smoothly.

I left in the morning, hoping that

  • The power company would come as promised at 8am to drop the line
  • Hidden Hills would come to cut down the tree
  • No trees would fall on my house or anything else important
  • The power company would come back to hook the power back up at 2pm

The whole time I was in Orono, I was checking my phone, waiting for the call that told me things weren’t working. The phone never rang.

I came home at 5:00pm to find this:

For once, it all went as planned. I didn’t have to do anything or be involved at all. It was wonderful. Our birdhouse took a direct hit, knocking the steeple off, but I’m okay with that.

Today, if all goes according to plan, the cutting and splitting will happen. It’s raining, though, so I think there’s a chance that gets delayed.

Still, it’s great to have down. I’m really surprised just how sunny the back yard is now. That tree was very large. I’m sad it had to go, really. I’m a fan of trees, but it had to happen. We’ve been worried since we moved in that it might hit our house or drop a limb on a child. That worry is gone now. Looking at the interior of the wood, it’s clear it had quite a few problems. Lots of bugs and rot.

Anyway, here’s to things working as intended for once. (Knock on wood.)

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