dead tree

Today I was surprised: I fully expected to be deadheading Lilacs and instead ended up digging two cherrys out of large, anerobic, stinky planters.  The boxes weren’t draining, and the trees  essentially drowned.  The forklift showed up loaded with plywood sheeting; we laid down plywood from perennial garden way to the first two planters of the visitors center.  We backed up a Toro Workman to the planter and started shoveling the slop out of the planters and cutting roots.   Then, we brought the forklift in, attached pulling straps around the tree and fed them through the tines and pulled the trees out.  Thank god we didn’t have to empty the planters of the mud.

Next, we moved on to rolling sections of tree down a hill to a skidloader and loading into the dumptruck.  None of the logs really rolled very well, and we had to really manhandle them to get them down the hill.  The Bobcat also stopped working (computer problem) and that delayed everything.  It really was like a game of slow-motion, mildly stupid Donkey Kong.  I finished the day up with weeding.