Stimulate This

I don't discuss politics on this blog, and I am not about to start now.. in the middle of an election year. I will say however that I wholeheartedly disagree with George Bush's Economic Stimulus plan. If the Federal Gov't really had THAT MUCH extra cash kicking around, I can think of about eleventy billion BETTER things they could've done with it, than to get people to buy more crap.





That's not to say that I sent my payment back. It's been sitting in our bank account where it direct deposited during the second week. We discussed to death all the things we could do with it. Improvements in the house, new furniture for the family room, replacing the back fence, replacing the front fence.. blah blah blah. We decided that we weren't buying more crap. So after about a month, we decided that we would do something big. We thought about what big project we wanted to do, but would always get pushed aside for something more important... and decided to have the big pine trees in the back yard cut down.

The previous owner planted 3 pine trees in the back corner of the yard. They probably were cute and nice when they were little. He told me a few years ago if he knew how big they were going to get, he would've only planted two. In my opinion, one was far too much for that space. On top of the 3 pine trees, we had 3 dead elm trees that HAD to come down before the snow flies. The bark has started falling off which means the bugs have been doing a number on them and we didn't want them to hit our neighbors house. On top of that, the trees had grown into the fence (well, not into, but resting right against it) and while we've taken down one section, in order to take down the rest and replace it, we needed the trees out. Hopefully that last section can wait until next year before falling over and we can do it in the spring.

Yesterday our tree guys came and took all the branches off the trees, and removed the dead elms. Today they brought in a crane, and took the rest of the trees out. The photo above is the before shot taken early yesterday morning before my walk. The lower photo is how it looked an hour ago. Before the middle of next week they will come back and grind out the stumps, and by this time next year the trees will be a distant memory. We will need to put loam down and throw down some seed to get grass to ever grow back there again (it wasn't really grassy to start.. too much shade and acidity from the pine trees), and I look forward to figuring out how to best use the space. It has brightened up our whole yard, along with the surrounding area, and as far as I'm convinced, it was worth every penny. Thank you George Bush for knowing exactly how much money it was going to cost to have those trees taken down and depositing it into my account.