Holy shit.

For the last two weeks, we've been having a lot of precipitation all at once.  I have a miniature lake out just past the driveway on the west end of the house where the sump pump line exits the crawl space (and boy, has that thing been constantly busy for the last couple weeks!).

Clearly, that hasn't been the only issue.  All of the ground is pretty saturated.

And it didn't freeze fast enough last weekend.  We had a winter storm hit with lots of cold and more wind than precip (we got a little bit of rain through the day Friday, and a bare dusting of snow Friday night/Saturday).  And it dropped a tree to the east of the house on the backyard fence.  Uprooted.  It's balanced between the roots, a stub of a branch dug into the ground inside the fence, and another main part of the trunk (it forked) braced on the corner post of the fence.

Yes, we tried to clear it.  We didn't realize a) how big it actually was,* or b) how precariously it was situated.  No, we haven't managed to do more than cut it down to a slightly more reasonable size.

So, today, I called a tree removal service, and mentioned the tree that went down on our fence.  I got an "Oh, bless your heart!" and a demand for the address, then a promise that they'd be here in half an hour (it was 20 minutes).  And the guy hops out, grinning, and said he'd trimmed the trees here years ago, and hustled around the house.  He's going to clear both the downed trees in the yard (there's a big one out past the fence that was here when we got the place) in the next couple days because the doc said his cancer didn't come back, and he's ready to get back to work.

His cancer.

I hate cancer, and I'm always happy to hear when somebody beats it.  No matter if I know them or not.

I will admit to having cheered for him right there, loudly and spontaneously.  Because I hate cancer almost as much as I hate Alzheimer's.

But he wants to get back to work.  And he said he was glad I called so that he could.

Yeah, his name/number's going into my planner for tree care.  Because there's other trees on the property that need dealt with before they become or cause a problem. 

*Tree was a good twenty inches in diameter or so.  And we had a 16" electric chainsaw.