I’m a tree hugger. Not in any kind of political sense, but simply in an I just love trees sense. Sadly, we had to take down one of our old aspen trees this year. It was a large one that provided shade and seclusion to our deck. In its healthy years, it also provided that quaking aspen sound that made me feel like I was in the mountains. It was hard to see it go. And it was really, REALLY hard to remove. It took most of the day. We sawed off branches and then the upper sections of the tree. We kept moving down until we got to all of the underground roots and shoots where we dug, yanked, sawed, and hacked. When we finally wrangled the stump out, we had a huge hole to place a new tree into. So we went and bought ourselves a new tree. Read More