We found a neighbor with a power tool. Life is good. Most of the time D cuts down a tree, or cuts a fallen tree into pieces, he uses a hand saw. It's not that we're against power tools. It's just that we keep thinking it isn't worth buying one because "we won't get much use out of it." Experience is proving otherwise, though I still keep thinking, "OK, but this is the LAST ONE." Trees take note. Please stop falling.
But now we are flush with good fortune of knowing where to locate a chainsaw without having to buy one on our own. And so in our first rain-free weekend day of the year (maybe not, but it sure feels like it), D got to work. It went so quickly! Within an hour, the tree went from this:
And here it is on Monday.
I think we will need several weeks of dry weather (not likely to happen) for the water table to go down. How deep is the hole. At least deeper than my preschooler's rain boots, as we learned when she fell right into the hole after poking it with sticks.
In other tree news, one of the trees we planted in fall of 2017 is not looking great. We wrapped it up this past fall because the deer were ruining the bark. We unwrapped it this month because we were afraid with all the wet weather that it would stay too moist and start rotting. And so this is the state of the tree bark. Too soon to see if it will have an effect on the tree itself - nothing is budding yet. The branches seem alive and happy so far (as much as they can be in winter), but if there are any tree experts that can give us advice on what to do next, please let us know. I want this beautiful maple to survive.
