The Tree Drama and a Text War

Beautiful trees , Tricky trees 

The three trees, Spotted Gum , far right
 Iron bark, middle , Bloodwood group of trees to the left

Spotted Gum 

We had some really gorgeous trees on our land . We had a spotted gum, an iron bark and a bloodwood. They were beautiful trees and provided us with a whole lot of really nice shade, so we really struggled with the idea that we were going to have to cut them down.  2 of them were actually not in very good positions and definitely had to go, they were going to be right where our house was going to be, so there was really no choice about that. Spotted gums are notorious for dropping huge branches that kill people and destroy your house, so of course I wanted to keep it but Ivan said no. He was the voice of reason as usual, Trudy my neighbour also loved the tree and we actually watched in horror as it came down together. But Ivan said we had to kill the beautiful tree. I mean i didn't want to destroy the house or die, but it was a beautiful 50 meter high majestic tree, teeming with life and i shed a tear when it came down. but then i thought...... OMG there is so much i can do with that wood !!!! 

We hired Jason, the local tree lopper, he came with some young bloke, who looked awesome without his shirt, but i digress. The job was done over a few days, they took off the smaller branches first and then lowered the bigger branches down with ropes, it was really cool .The branches came down with incredible thuds that shook the whole ground and somehow miraculously missed all Trudy's newly planted small trees. Once all the big branches were off it was time for the tree trunk to come down. Now i wasn't planning on taking out the root ball but everyone felt that it would save me a lot of money to have it out then, than need to take it out later. ( that is also called peer pressure), so i was 900$ poorer for it but it is out. The root ball was a bitch to get out and i really don't think it wanted to come out , but the digger was persistent. and the whole trunk and root ball came out finally and fell almost in the neighbour to the other side's house, it was tense, sad and awesome  



  

Spotted Gum in the act of being butchered 

It was made clear to me that i had some pretty awesome wood,  it's grain was just beautiful !  So basically i had saved tree guy the tip fees that that were already included in the price by keeping the wood, for this he promised me a day of chainsaw work , which seems to be a very time consuming process. Cut a little , sharpen all the tiny ridges , start again!! The wood was gorgeous, a beautiful  rich red colour, unfortunately, it was so heavy it was impossible to lift. So it got cut and there it lay.. The wood was wet and would dry and then hopefully we would be able to work with it. It takes a long time to dry, so it needs to be covered and kept out of the sun.  
 We were enamoured with it  all the same. We stained it and dreamed of all the beautiful things we could make!

Ironbark treated with car oil 

Spotted gum with ironbark still standing in the background 

There was only so much that can get done in a day, so being me, paid the tree guy in advance to cut up the rest of the wood, $300, I thought this was a very generous offer. We agreed that the big piece of Spotted gum would be cut up and stained, and then covered  and the little pieces of wood would be disposed of. Unfortunately the tree guy lost his phone for a very long time, so he was unable to call me, go to the land or email. This was a major delay in the the work. Then i guess he kind of found me a little annoying because i started calling on a weekly basis to check when the work would get done. It seems there were a lot of other things that had to get done first. So now it has been about three months and i guess it's kind of normal that we had to have it out. So there were some harsh words , a cut off , a hang up and then of course a text war. nowadays you can't go without a good text war 

Will I ever see that piece of spotted Gum 

I had needed this work done before the excavation started, it's started now and unfortunately, all the wood had to be moved around by the digger and so now it is all in a big heap with the piece i wanted biscuited on the bottom. (See photo above ). So i guess what is the moral of the story ? Duh !!!! don't ever pay till the work is done. You basically deserved to get screwed. Lesson learned or do trusting canadian ladies ever really learn ??  You need to listen to your untrusting suspicious russian husband more !!!