Bye Bye Trees
August 29, 2014
The crew that did the demolition of the house came back to take down about 25 trees in the yard that were sitting on the footprint of the new house.
Ted was in charge; he was a professional with the chain saw!
Most of the trees were reasonably small so the guys could get them down easily.
Plus since the house was gone, the trees could fall anywhere without doing much damage. 
And then the guys stacked all of the wood along the fence line and all of the brush along the western edge of the driveway. There was A LOT of wood when they were finished.
September 3-4, 2014
A professional tree crew came to take down the last two, more complicated trees: a hickory in the center of the driveway that could fall on the power lines, and a maple on the property line that could fall and crush the house next door.
They also put all of the brush through the chipper and spread the chips in the front yard.
When the tree crews were done, all the wood was neatly stacked in the front yard.
So I went to work the following day (Friday, September 5th) and came home that night to discover that ALL of the firewood was GONE! I asked the contractor if he took it, but he had no idea what happened to it. Then I asked the neighbors, who said that two guys in a white Chevy 4×4 pickup truck took it away that morning. The neighbors thought it was just the tree crew getting rid of the wood. Wrong! So the weekend went by and I conceded that the wood had been stolen.
Then on Monday morning, I was out for a run in the neighborhood. I ran past a house on the block behind me and saw a white Chevy pickup truck in the driveway. After looking a bit further, I saw my wood in the front yard! It was right under my nose the whole time in my neighbor’s yard.
To make a long story short, it turns out that the tree crew told my neighbor that he could have the firewood. This happened because I told the head of the tree crew not to take any wood because I was going to give it to my neighbors and the contractor. So when this neighbor came by the house, the tree guy assumed it was the “neighbor” to whom I promised the wood. But it wasn’t. I had never met him before.
So that night after work I went over to his house. He had already heard from another neighbor that there had been a big misunderstanding and that the firewood was meant for other people. So he apologized profusely and said I could have it all back. But in the end, the contractor was happy to get the wood out of the yard and he didn’t want any more of it. Most neighbors had already lost interest too. So we agreed that I would get one truck load of split wood in exchange for keeping the 5 truck loads that he took from my yard. One day I hope to have a wood stove in the new house and it will come in handy. All’s well that ends well and I met a new, really nice neighbor. I was upset when it happened… now it’s a funny story.