The forest from the trees...

When we bought our house, one of the first things we fell in love with was the view. In fact, that is what I teased with in my blog post about buying this house - what a VIEW! So many trees!

However, trees grow. And at some point, the view is gone... lately, all that could be seen was trees.

High time to do something about this! Of course we were not going to cut those trees ourselves, so we hired a couple of tough guys to do the work for us. Here they are, ready to roar!

They are efficient... there goes a big one. Going ...

... Going ...

... Gone!

The picture doesn't really show it, but it is tremendously steep where these guys are - they must be related to mountain goats! Murray and I were afraid to watch...

All done, we're so happy! Once more, we can say "What a VIEW!"

That was not all though. The biggest challenge was a huge pine tree in front of the house. This tree was a real problem to us.

It was very close to the house and towered right over it. We were getting pretty frightened with every storm! Lately, big branches started to fall and we felt it was only a matter of time before some serious damage would occur.

To our trusted tree feller, taming the "monster" posed no difficulties. First, he needed to climb the tree in order to saw off the branches one by one.

The higher he goes... the barer the tree looks! Some of the higher branches were as thick and heavy as a tree... what a dangerous job.

Soon there was nothing left but the trunk. The guys decided to topple that right across the lawn. We were nervous about it, not in the last place because everyone who knew we were having some "tree surgery" performed teased us about it falling the wrong way... but these guys know what they are doing!