During. And more during.

After all the work Stephen and Isaac did pulling down the sickly, thin, and annoying trees, there were still some serious problems with the trees.

There were several trees, like this one, that were just dead or dying.

And most of the rest were hackberry trees, which have a tendency to rot and split and generally make life difficult.

So we decided to take thirteen of the weakest and least healthy trees out.

The tree guys came, and very sensibly marked which ones we wanted gone.

And then on the appointed day, they came, all seven of them, with their bucket truck and Bobcat and ropes and pulleys and fourteen (!) chainsaws.

First they dropped the easy trees.  Right in the middle of the yard, without, like, measuring it or anything.

They used the Bobcat to help them cut it into pieces.

Then they brought out the bucket truck.

And we all watched . . .

(some of us more nervously than others)

. . . as they cut down the trickier trees.

I will admit that I got a little nervous at this point, too.

The guy in the bucket seemed less concerned for his safety than, perhaps, he ought to have been.

He kept leaning right out of the bucket, with the chainsaw in one hand, just lopping off big old branches.

I mean, he was really leaning.  Really far out of the bucket.  Using a chainsaw one-handed.

I found this a little stressful.  (But nothing went wrong, and we're all grateful for that.)

There were a few trees that needed an even more elaborate setup.

There were pulleys and anchors and a bobcat pulling rope and all kinds of fun stuff . . .

. . . so that they could drop the individual branches slowly and carefully, before taking the trunk down.

It was a fascinating process.

The Bobcat had a lot to do, in addition to anchoring ropes and lifting big trunks to be cut up.

It hauled all the trees to the curb.

There was a rather big pile.

So big, in fact, that they needed even more heavy equipment to come haul it away.

(I'm pretty sure Theo and Amos had the best day of their lives.  And I feel really stupid for failing to take video.  We could have made our own episode of Mighty Machines, and it could have been about two hours long.)

Theo hung out with the guys whenever they took a break.

Because, you know, he's Theo.  I'm pretty sure he wangled a job offer out of them.

And, finally, it was done.

We went from this:

. . . to this:

(Still not a huge change.)

This:

. . . to this:

This:

. . . to this:

And this:

. . . to this:

Alas, once more, the improvement left us feeling even more depressed and unhappy.

All the light finally flowing in to the yard only served to point up all its deficiencies.  And as hard as they tried not to destroy anything, you can't bring all that heavy equipment into a place without tearing up the soil.

We tried working with it.  We thought about ways to go piecemeal--a little grass seed on this side, a little mulch on that side, a few bushes here until we could get the ones we really wanted there.

But after a few weeks of trying to wrestle it into submission, we surrendered.

We got even more professional help.

Before . . .

Well, our new yard is, to be perfectly frank, not what we (I) had wanted.

It's going to take a great deal of work to make it even remotely acceptable.

It doesn't look so bad if you just stand on the back deck and look around, at noon on a bright, sunny day.

Nor even if you just take a peek into the back yard from the edge of the driveway.

Small child added for scale.

But if you start to look closer, you can see years and years of neglect and bad landscaping decisions.

I'm sure this used to be, started to be, or was supposed to be some nicely-laid pathway.

Instead, it's a sand pit with some concrete stepping stones, too small and too widely spaced to be of any use to anyone.

The trees in the back aren't the sort of trees one deliberately plants as a screen.  They're just junk trees, weed trees.  They've grown up in and around the crape myrtles that were probably planted intentionally as a screen and are now so choked out by trees and invasive vines that they may not be salvageable.

But I have a plan.

I also have a man with a chainsaw . . .

. . . and two fascinated spectators.

"Are you sure it's safe to sit here, Mom?"

Just you wait.