A nice little snowstorm, very pretty.

Also mission accomplished: one four inch, forty foot, very dead, and something of a widowmaker to put it mildly, ash tree removed from its position next to the driveway. The tiny, very nice Japanese Maple next to it, undamaged (I did not tell the person taking it down about said maple until after, it was either going to survive or it wasn’t), the azaleas, rhododendrons, laurels, shadblow, and stewartia also all undamaged.  The latter two were in the path that it wanted to fall in, so it had to go the way it didn’t want to go…

Causing it to fall ninety degrees away and down the driveway required a long rope, a pulley, a strap, the use of a large pine tree, and a large truck.  One pulls, you see, if possible on the far side of the tree and not along the fall path.  The rope runs from the tree, to the pulley (which is attached to the strap around the pine tree), back past the tree being cut, to the truck.  That way nothing is in the danger zone.  Having carefully cut the tree so it wants to go in the direction you want it to, you start pulling. And Thud. Well, multiple thuds. Dead trees tend to come down in unpredictable bits, some of which can land quite a bit farther away than you think they will.  Hence pulling from the far side of the thing. And also why you pull it over rather than simply cut it.  Especially when it is already broken and its top is hanging.

This is a straightforward operation, but definitely an expert one.

It does look much nicer with it out of there!