More Work for the Friendly Neighborhood Track-Hoe

So as I mentioned earlier the two houses beside us have been leveled. The nifty piece of equipment doing all this work is a track-hoe operated by Mr. Richard. Mr. Richard is a 40-year veteran at operating a track hoe and he can get the job done and get it done fast. The equipment owner is Alsup and they came out a day or two after the tornado and unloaded this thing and it hasn't left since. He worked for almost two days for free piling up all the trees behind the houses and along our top fence row. Then he disassembled the neighbors' houses. Yesterday he took down a 100'+ cottonwood tree that was between us and Linda. He got paid to take the tree down, but I asked and for free he removed the two huge stumps that were left of the poplars in the front yard. I can't tell you how much work and money he saved us just by doing that, much less all the trees behind our houses. So if you live in the area and you need a track-hoe, we've got people.

Above are some photos of one of the tree clumps along the fence row. It is hard to capture the tangled mess in one photo. All the branches of the different trees are twisted, tangled and intertwined with each other. It is cool to look at but makes a very dangerous place to work. You can't tell which branch is supporting the weight of the others so you don't know what will happen as you cut each one. We have marked several of the messiest trees with orange paint and our friendly neighborhood track-hoe will begin working in the morning to remove them. All of the trees we have marked so far are right along the fence row. We finished removing the brown vinyl from the fence posts (hopefully to re-use) so hopefully the track hoe will yank up the posts as he moves along. There are two huge oak trees, about six feet around or more and they have what we have learned are called "widow makers." These are large branches broken high up in the tree. Some are dangling by a thread and some are precariously balanced on other branches just waiting for a reason to fall. It would be ridiculously dangerous to attempt to chainsaw these trees down.

The roof was repaired this week. Unfortunately they didn't patch a couple of the holes in the roof wood and I pointed this out to the contractor so they will be re-shingling after they repair the holes. I guess those holes in the ceiling came in handy.

The siding guy is delayed because of all the rain we've had but I expect him early next week, a week from tomorrow. The contractor wants to get somebody working inside the house this week, but I'm not holding my breath. If I was a betting woman I would bet the house sits as is for another week. Don't tell Konrad I said that :)