Counting our Blessings

We lost a tulip tree in a storm not too long ago, but we didn't realize it till the next morning when I looked out the window and saw the tree lying on the ground right next to our garden shed.

It came thisclose to hitting the shed.

Unlike the last one that came down, this tree fell all the way down. 

Kind of. 

The top bent on the last one before eventually falling off. The top on this one came off all the way, which made cleaning it up a lot easier.

what's left of the tree

the part that splintered off

Mr M had fun with the chainsaw- I've used it before, but this was his first chance. LMS helped Daddy by moving the branches away after he cut them.

in the middle of the destruction

We found a scar on the trunk near where it splintered, but we also found these:

woodpecker holes. lots of them.

They certainly don't help improve the integrity of the tree. We had a tree at our last house shear in half, and we think it was because of woodpecker damage. The trunk looked just like this one.

more recent holes right next to older holes

We still need to rent/buy a chipper to take care of all the branches, and Mr M needs to finish chopping up the trunk pieces. His arm muscles just gave out- if you've used a chainsaw, you know exactly what I'm talking about. We're leaving the standing portion of the trunk for now. We'll take it down when it gets cooler and we go through and clean up the woods- there's some small trees we also need to take care of.

I guess it's a good thing we never got around to planting our garden (Mr M's training and our trip to Boston got in the way), since it would have been completely demolished. Silver lining, right? :)