Well today the start of something positive began from something negative.
Last Sunday during the wind storm we had come thru snapped the tops of two
dead Jack pines and only took out the railing of the back steps off my deck,
and crushed the lavendar butterfly bush. It needed whacking anyway.....But
when the insurance people came to survey the damage, it was pointed out to
me that I had a much larger problem with the huge trees that sit just below
the house on the first official terraced edge. (I have three lips before it
levels out somewhat, those that have visited know of what I speak here)
Next to the large shed I'm not using, were two huge dead Jack's and if it
ever snapped, it would take out the middle of my house and fall as far as
the driveway!!

Well today I heard the dinstinct crack of something ominous............and
sure enough, that som'bitch had started cracking. But as the luck o' the
Irish has been kind to me lately, and the fairies have watched over me
somewhat, my phone rang about half an hour later and it was a little honest
man from Indiana who now lives here in Dandridge and wanted to come out to
look at my trees and see if we could work a deal on him cutting them down.
not topping them, not hauling them, but actually cutting them down and up
into chunks. YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!

So he comes out in TEN MINUTES, and looks at my mess, and tells me, that for
$100 he'll cut down FIVE trees for me today..........................WOW!
and I had $132.44 in the bank. In the process of cutting the bad boy down
first, he took out a small black walnut and I told him he could take them
ALL out!!! LOL

He felled another topped pine I'd had done a couple of years ago I wrote to
ya'll about when that man dropped the tree on my tomato boxes, and the huge
trunk was about five feet above my deck. Mr. Issacs looked at it and decided
it too needed to be cut down, and he dropped it, missing my twisted filbert,
Yoshino cherry, Kousa dogwood, Forest Pansy redbud, and two eastern redbuds
I'd planted in the woods room last year.

Over the course of this season, he's returning and taking out 98% of my
problem trees, leaving me with my good tulip poplars (I might lose one small
one if he takes the jack pine right next to it but we'll see if the pine
beetles affect it before we decide) some pin oaks and a couple of Jack pines
and maybe three cedars. but the cedars I kinda doubt. I'll have a lot of
removal of chunks of tree trunks but it'll be better than worrying about how
I'm going to drop these things as the pine beetles kill
them.................

Happy St. Patricks day!!!!
My hellebores are all blooming themselves to death, my Virginia bluebells
are lifting delecate arms loaded with buds in the whiskey barrel under the
black cherry tree, narcissus are everywhere, woods hyacinths are releasing
their fragrances, the air is full of the sounds of song from all the birds,
peepers and over to the northwest up on the pasture that rises behind me,
the turkeys are mating in the field with the peacock trying to herd the hens
for himself...........their squawking is audible even down to my house.

madgardener up on the ridge, back in fairy holler where there is more
sunlight now at the back of the house, overlooking English Mountain in
Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36