Down it comes. . .

For those of the green persuasion, you may not want to read this. This was a very high tree and healthy. However, to cut down the necessary limbs and branches, it was just too dangerous to send anyone up that high. There are no cherry-pickers here, so the only way to cut things are for someone to shinny up and start cutting.

After Miguel had tied off some rope about 45 feet or so up in the tree and had shinnied back down, the three of us tied off the rope to another tree, and Miguel went to work with the chainsaw.

He cut it as deep as he felt comfortable with, and we pulled and sat and jumped up and down on the rope. No dice, the tree wasn't going anywhere.

Miguel went to bring in another fellow who lives across the street. No luck, not enough weight to bring the tree down. Then Miguel went to get another two fellows and a hand-winch.

This was about a 2-hour process, while the winch was hooked up (including Miguel climbing the tree again after it had been cut to wrap some cable around up high) and everyone was wrenching downward on the rope.

Finally, there was a good breeze blowing through and the hand-winch was cranked tight. At that point, the tree started crackling and all six of us all bolted in six different directions when the massive tree came crashing down.

No one was hurt, the tree fell far enough away from everyone. Two of the fellows bolted through hanging vines that have about 1/4-inch stickers and had some scrapes from that, but otherwise were OK. When the tree came down, everyone was pulling so hard on the rope, no one could see which way it was falling, so it was a mad dash for safety when the bugger came down.

The tree did take out one of the power lines that light up the driveway, but we had those up and fixed within an hour.

Now, we're just waiting for Coopalesca to show up.