Amatuer Arborist

Guess who has the worst looking yard in the neighborhood?
In our defense, it was a foreclosure and we used up all our money covering up the hideous paint on the inside of the house. But recently we got our tax returns and decided that there was enough to fix the yard. Before we got fined by the city as some people in our neighborhood had experienced.
So we called our favorite handy man guy who came over and gave us an estimate, which we accepted, and gave him a deposit to go order sod. Saturday it suddenly occurs to Monica that we have a huge ugly dead tree in the middle of the yard. This tree was about 8-9 feet tall but had no branches or leaves. She wants to get rid of it. I did too but figured it was too late to worry about it since the yard work starts Monday. With my typical make lemonade out of lemons mentality figured we could pretend that we intended it to be there and make some sort of low table or put a pot of flowers on it or a ceramic turtle or something. This eats away at my sister all weekend long. She suggests tying a rope to it and to her Suburban and pulling it out. I remind her of how many times movies had used that as a plot device. Even our mom recalls a time her father tried to do that only to have it pull the bumper and part of the undercarriage of the car off. I don't spend any much time worrying over this, but my sister is now obsessed. I go to work. She occasionally texts me with thoughts about the dead tree and to make sure I was really at work since she still hasn't really forgiven me for that episode a few weeks ago when she thought I was dead in a ditch somewhere.

Sunday Afternoon.... In her own words:
I was laying in bed, taking a nap, thinking "I am sure I can pull that tree up by myself. I am just going to go on down and try one time." So I put on my bedroom slippers and went outside. With my right leg I started pushing on the tree while I was on the phone with my sister (who thought I was really nuts) telling her what I was doing. In about four pushes it snapped and there it went. Luckily I wasn't pushing it towards the picture windows in the front of the house. And Viola! No more tree in the front yard. And to think we thought about hiring someone to come do that and probably charge us hundreds of dollars. Who says us girls can't handle things by ourselves?
This is a picture of the tree surgeon. It was getting dark outside when we got home from the movies so I pulled the car up across the street and turned on the brights. Of course the neighbors were watching this.
Anyhow.... She performed an amputation just above the bifurcation. The patient did not survive the surgery. It has, in fact, been thrown over the fence where we plan to cut it up and cremate it next winter.
Rest in peace, dead tree..... rest in piece! (Get it?) (I crack myself up)