I cannot tell a lie...We did chop down that apple tree!

Ok, so Washington's was a cherry tree, but this weekend, Rusty chopped down our apple tree. It was super overgrown and hadn't been taken care of in years. It was too tall to get any apples and the apples were not getting enough nutrients to get big and juicy...so, we decided that it was about time for the tree to get pruned...severely! We hope it will live through it, but if it doesn't then we will both be ok with it. At least this fall our yard (and neighbor's yard) won't be filled with rotting apples :) yay for no rotting apples! (These are going to be fairly large photos so you can see the amazing detail!)

Here is Rusty beginning to chop down the tree...notice the massive size (by the way, please no nasty comments about how we are waaay to late in the season to be pruning...believe me, we know) :)

Here is Rusty beginning to take down the second large portion of the tree. If you look carefully, you will be able to see that our chainsaw got stuck about half-way into the tree trunk. It started ok, but the chain was stuck on something, so no backing it out. He is using our neighbor's chainsaw. Johnny came out to help us after watching from his kitchen window for a while. We sure did appreciate his help! He even brought over his huge ladder to tie the rope higher up the tree trunk. Up he went into the tree...with it already notched...with his cigarette hanging from his mouth..."I ain't scared..." :) Oh, neighbors!

Here is the first part of the tree that fell...no pictures of both of them down, sorry!

So, after the second part of the tree fell, Rusty worked hard with the chainsaws to get most of the large limbs cut from the 2 trunks. We took the rest of Saturday off and enjoyed the company of some friends from Rusty's work. But...Sunday, we were back at it again, well, Rusty was back at it again, was just at it for the first time. This is after tons and tons and tons of work using the limb cutters to get the limbs into manageable piles which we in turn tied with rope so that our trash company would take them away on Yard Waste Day (Friday!!). We counted in all about 53 piles of branches...no longer than 4' tall, less than 2" in diameter that can be handled easily by 1 person (from the website directly). We figured that if I could lift them, then the dump truck people would be able to too!

So, after all was said and done, we had our yard looking pretty clean! We are going to save the larger limbs and trunk for firewood for our firepit! We weren't able to get that cleaned up because we were soooo tired and it started to rain. Here is our apple tree, all neatly bundled in manageable bundles ready for our trash people to take away on Friday.

Here is all that is left of our apple tree...a very cute flower arrangement that adorned our table for dinner on Saturday night. Apple blossoms have a wonderful smell!