Ho, I’m so far behind, I’m gonna wrap this up kinda wikiwiki…. with a bunch of videos and photos.

Here’s Mr Tree Monkey getting the very top of the tree.

He keeps going higher and higher. Now this one, watch close and turn up your volume to hear him. Oh my gosh, this would’ve scared me so bad, but he thinks it’s fun!

Talk about AFK’s sweating feets!

Plenny videos, I know. I hope youʻre not getting tired of them yet. It really was a fascinating process.

Okay, one of the main trunks is down. Now thereʻs another one.

Umm…….

OMG. AFK going need anodda towel.

Heʻs more down now.

Big log coming down! Heavier than the coconuts we used to have to watch out for!

See how heʻs on one trunk and cutting the other one?

Try look the sparks flying as Ed loads a log into the grinder.

Heʻs coming down into more of my comfort zone now.

The driveway. You can still see the basketball hoop on the main trunk.

We had a cottonwood tree outside my office that needed to come down, and Ed said he and his crew could fall it for us. We were happy to pay extra to keep it from coming down onto our roof.

Still ʻway too high for me. The doves in the aviary were fascinated by the whole process.

In which Ed Jenson and Mr Tree Monkey show us how it’s done.

This is the third guy in the crew. For the maple tree, he was at the grinder, and now he’s helping with cleanup of the cottonwood.

Ed had to get a special tool to cut off the basketball hoop, so that was it for the day. I wasn’t home when they cut down the final remains of the maple tree. Good thing. I would’ve cried. That tree was in our driveway for over fifty years, twenty-nine of those while we lived here.

This is what it looked like the next day.

The next day, the stump grinder guy came over and started the process of making a huge puka where the tree used to be.

The chunks of asphalt will go back into the puka.

It was a huge job.

And this is what was left of that magnificent tree.

When I came home after being away, the driveway looked so bare…and kinda weird. The driveway had been so full of maple tree for so many years, and now…

Nolemana and his helper began splitting the logs.

We got a lot of firewood. See in the back about 11:00? That was the rotten trunk.

So big da puka!

And so ends the saga of our Oregon Big-Leaf Maple tree. The puka is now partially covered with broken asphalt and broken bricks. We’ll finish filling it with asphalt when the rain stops.

This was really bittersweet for me; but I must admit I feel a lot safer since the tree’s down. I’m saving some of the wood, and will have an awesome wood artist make me some stuffs out of it… ♥

I can’t use enough superlatives to describe the job that Ed Jenson Tree Service did. They were awesome, friendly, very professional, and they didn’t damage any of our driveway. This sure made the whole process easier all the way around from imua to pau.