Walk on the wild side of the law

Hey, remember the post on Aug 9, in which I coyly mentioned some workers who unexpectedly showed up to do a job for us (& which indirectly led to frigging Flood II in my basement)?

Well, now I can reveal all.

We had a 50 foot tall dead cedar on our property. Last year, its sibling died & the previous owner had to jump through a billion hoops to get permission to remove the damned thing because it's right beside a creek which feeds into a fishbearing stream and this is BC - land of salmon and home of Green Peace. They finally allowed him to cut it but it had to be left in situ to support the ecosystem. It was dropped nicely across the creek and the kids have been enjoying the bridge it makes.

But now we had another one die (and btw, it's possible more will die as the arborist thinks it's a virus spreading through the neighbourhood) and the creek is too small to have another log spanning it. I trekked to city hall, talked to the people in charge of tree cutting permits, and after a bit of talking we came to an agreement in principle to have the tree cut & removed. WhooHoo. All I needed to do was to find a certified tree cutting company to do the job, then fill out the appropriate forms, and approval would be granted.

Fine so far.

We saw the tree cutters working a couple blocks away months ago, and Roo wandered over there & asked them to give us a quote when they were done for the day. They did and we said we'd think about it. Well we did think about it & I called the guy & asked him to return my call so we could talk more about it & make arrangements for a day to do the job.

Instead of calling me, the guy just showed up with his crew. But, I sputtered, I need to fill out the forms first and fax them to city hall. The guy looked at me thoughtfully and then suggested that perhaps we could pretend they just showed up when I wasn't home. And we'll do the forms later.

Hmmmm. I've seen Fargo. I don't argue with people with chainsaws and a tree chipper which can eat a 50 foot tall cedar in 2 bites.

The permit did arrive so now we're all legal.

They'd left this absurdly tall stump last year and we asked them to trim that down as well. And see the lovely air pullution?

Cutting the notches in the tree. The tree had a bunch of ropes attached to it and there were 2 guys to the bottom right in the picture who were going to pull & guide it down.

Timber! We retreated indoors because Hornblower got a bit nervous at this point just in case they accidentally dropped in on the deck and on our heads. So here we are in the dining room, behind Amelia's windowart (to prevent birds from flying into the glass).

There she goes! And what a colossal mess it made. Roo had quite a time cleaning out the creek and the damaged vegetation on the banks. When you get a great deal on tree cutting, they drop it, drag it, chop it, and leave. You're stuck with the clean-up of the site. We figured out afterwards that that was why the price they quoted us was so low. To do a really clean job, they have to climb it, lopping off the limbs as they go up, and then take it down in smaller chunks; that is much cleaner but it takes lots of time and effort.

Ah well. We have to work in this area anyway so it's not a huge deal; we'll be planting a number of various native trees and shrubs in the area - it's currently partly overgrown with invasive species. But I think we'll lose a couple small deciduous trees which got badly battered by the cedar landing on them so that's a bummer.

In other news - I can almost see the end of the chapter called "My Adventures with Primer - or how to shrink the square footage of your hallway and go bankrupt by spending your entire reno budget on cans of paint" Hopefully there will be pictures of that soon.

Tags: tree cutting, creek, home renovation, Hornblower