Droppin' some trees

We had a couple of trees taken out of the front yard on Friday. There was one butting up against the driveway which had been slowly moving a slab over the years...about 3.5" over! And it was kinda swallowing the slab, too. We wanted to take it out before it cracked the slab and messed up the sidewalk/walk-up to the front of the house (which I had repaired last year). The other tree was about four feet from the front of the house near the front door. It had a few large branches over the roof which we felt would be a problem some day, especially if we had some high winds or a nice ice storm over the winter.

Working on the "Driveway Tree": The top half of the pine tree is down and you can see the guy at the top. He was wearing a safety belt and had climbing spikes attached to his boots.

This is how you take a very tall tree down, one piece at a time. The worker is about 50 feet up and saws off a 4-foot chunk of the trunk. Then he pushes it off to the ground below where the other guys cut it up into smaller pieces for loading on the flatbed trailer.

Here's what's left of the oak tree that was directly in front of the house. You can barely see the stump to the left of the sidewalk that leads up to the front door. All this wood will be hauled off on Monday. At least we hope it will...maybe Tuesday?