The Tree is dead! Long live the Tree!

(Okay, so I don't have the heir to the tree yet, but the old one is *out*!!!)

So, Wednesday I put up the chain I bought and reattached the come-along (since I didn't want to borrow the neighbour's chain for too long). It turns out that those "quick links" come with the "do not use where failure could be catastrophic" warning for a reason:

Pathetic quality control! Good thing I had bought some spares, although they turned out to be *just* fat enough that I had to find links that were slightly D-shaped to put them through.

Also shown in the above photo... the *awesome* loop I put on my (well, long-term borrowed from mom and Bob) garden shears, to replace the one long-since lost. Okay, so it's not that awesome... but it does the job well, and the soldering job isn't horrible. ;)

Wednesday I dug around the root ball a bit more:

disentangled Dad's junk from the creeping virginia here:

(except the boards, which will become raised beds if dad doesn't get them first) and put it with the other junk here:

and put up some wires and tied up most of the raspberries beside the garage:

(I didn't get them all because I ran out of the string I had outside, and the sun had set by that point. I still need to get to the last few.)

Mom came over on Friday and did a bit more digging. (My mom is awesome.)

Saturday, I dug some more, while mom took apart one of the pallets for me:

After using the chainsaw some more, the tree was still standing, but we had managed to accomplish a noticeable lean with pressure applied by the come-along:

(The chainsaw cut great at first, after my neighbour had sharpened it for me, but then it went back to producing sawdust. *sigh*.) I was feeling a bit shaky by then, and mom needed to go anyway, so I had some yoghurt before getting back to work.

I tried getting the soil out from around the roots still left, but the soil was solid clay. So I took the nails out of my pallet boards and made a raised bed:

I got it half-way filled with dirt before I *had* to stop for dinner.

Sunday we brought out the big guns to work on the tree: my neighbour and his son. Not only did they get the tree down:

(dad's bucket of brick bits bit the dust after a square hit from the tree):

but they also cut the trunk into rounds for me, which I plan to use as stepping "stones":

(actual stepping stones being rather pricey, once you factor in how many I want... this way I can just buy a few here and there as these rot. Although I probably won't have enough and will still need to buy some now.)

Go figure, the stump portion fell back into the hole, so I'll need to heave it out later:

(I've told another neighbour who likes to have bonfires that they can have it, so maybe it'll disappear on its own...)

Now to put the dirt back in the hole, dig in organic matter, and get stuff *planted*!!! Yay!!!