bye, bye, spruce!

yop, choppy, choppy!  the fugly spruce got hacked.  it has immediately opened up the front yard, and made me a very happy lady.  it's amazing to me how one smallish change can make such a huge difference.

this is one of those "one small step for the landscape, one large step for landscapekind" moments.  to me, it is just the thing that i needed to see to know that the ball is rolling, and we will have a changed front yard this year.  and that's cool beans.

the stately, fugly spruce, before

this poor tree had been mauled by a sister spruce the year that we moved into the house.  she came down during a storm, across our driveway, scratching, and grabbing, and trying to hold on to her smaller sibling.  while this one survived the storm, it was much worse for the wear.  the ugliest side of course is the street side.

i felt small twinges of guilt when the chopping began, only because i know that many local birds hang out in the branches.  tho when it came down, we couldn't find any nests.  i felt immediately better.  the hubs felt bad about it, but really he has a hard time cutting anything living down, regardless of ugliness.  (there will be a story in a future post about a root stock apple that he wept over...just kidding...sort of.)

and the boy protested the chopping, and wanted to be inside during the show.  he's still talking about how he wants the tree back a week later.  hey, mama's got a plan, boy!

what those guys doin, mama?

so now our front yard is more open, and we can have a straight driveway.  wahhhhoooooo!  just gotta move that stump.

before, watch for the left-most bigass tree

after - hey, there's the house!  holy crap, better plant something else there soon.

hoping our trusty tractor man comes back this weekend for some grading love.  then the momentum will really pick up.