TIIIIIIIIIIIMBERRRRRRRRR!!!!

Since we've moved into our house here in Cairns, it seems that all we've done is pay good money to get less stuff. And the trend continues!

We had a couple of trees in the back yard that were starting to become an issue. The one down the side, overhanging the patio:

And the three big (BIIIIG!!!) fishtail palms against the back fence:


The side-tree had a few problems:

• It would drop leaves 12 months of the year. An inordinate amount of leaves. Said dead leaves were constantly accumulating in our back patio area, requiring weekly clean-outs with the blowervac.
  
• It would drop seed pods pretty much year round, which really hurt when you stood on them on the back patio area (where 90% of them would inevitably end up)
• It would drop sticks and branches pretty much year round, which was just annoying.
• It was right smack-bang in the centre of my planned driveway into the back yard.
• It was rotting from the inside out. The roots were all rotted and hollow, as were the main load-bearing branches. At one point I turned around and staked my crowbar into the ground, and it disappeared down about 2", where it had struck into a decaying root and just kept going.
• Nothing would grow around it, especially grass.

Which is a shame, since it was a nice enough tree, and provided plenty of shade. But it had to go.

As for the fishtale palms, they were just huge.


They had massive seed-pods hanging from them, which would drop seeds and fruit all over the back lawn, which quickly became like shotgun pellets to your shins whenever mowing was required (IE, every week in summer). Due to the sheer size of them, they were starting to concern us. Despite being right on the back fence, if they were to fall towards the house, they would be able to crash through the back patio no worries at all. And the weight of them would ensure that there wouldn't be much left afterwards. Heck - even one of the fronds that has died and falled to the ground is difficult to drag out to the front, and takes up pretty much the entire garden bag once chopped up!

Before we could get the tree loppers in though, we had some work to do.


The garden down that side was set up to continue up to the base of the tree, as you can see above. Inside the garden was a bit of a mess of ginger plants (really pretty flowers, and as hardy as anything, but a little dishevelled to look at), and further up (behind the tree in that shot) was what we think used to be a cubby-house. 4 coppers logs set in concrete, with left-over pavers set underneath. All of this would need to be cleared before the men arrived, as they couldn't be working with garden and rocks in their way, and their stump grinder wouldn't take kindly to munching on concrete blocks!


The ginger was easily cleared out. We had sprayed it with roundup the week prior, so hopefully we won't have to deal with much regrowth in what will now be lawn. The paving and coppers logs proved both harder and easier than we had thought. The pavers were difficult because they had a layer of crap over them. Weeds growing through, old palm fronds that Badger had dragged out of the garden and left there, dropped leaves and sticks from the tree - it was all just sitting on top of the worlds dodgiest paving job. We had borrowed the ute for the day, so I set about breaking the pavers out and digging them out, and throwing them behind me on the lawn. Jess picked them up and threw the broken dodgy ones into the ute, and kept a stack of reasonably good ones for a future project.


All going good, until we'd finished getting all the pavers out.

And discovered that there was a second layer underneath that, and this layer consisted of house bricks. Where THEY came from, I've no idea. Our house is constructed from besser blocks, not bricks, so they definitely weren't left over from that. Somewhere in our neighbourhood is a house that's missing half it's wall.

So just as we thought we were finished, we realised that we were only half way through, and that the half we had done was considerably easier (and half the weight) of what was still to come. By the end of the day though, we had them all dug up, and with the ute resting on it's bumpstops, we took a trip to the dump and thoroughly confused the dump attendant. Of course, we then had the privilege of unloading the ute by hand into the "Building Rubble" section - what I would've given for a tipper tray that day.

Once the garden area was cleared, we were able to move the rocks that form the garden edge back towards the fence to allow for a good width for vehicle access. The 2 shrubs against the fence were cut right back to ensure they don't crowd over the new driveway and encroach into the new space. Hopefully they'll bush up again quickly.


This only left the coppers logs. We decided early on that we would probably leave the two that were set against the fence, since they're not in anyone's way, and the less digging and mucking about the better. The fist log (the one closest to the tree) was difficult to get at with tree roots and such in the way. We finally had a breakthrough when we realised that the log itself was moving slightly within the concrete. A couple of sharp hits to the concrete with the breaker bar, and it shattered into three or four pieces! The log then lifted straight out, and the individual pieces of concrete would then be lifted out one at a time. Thank goodness for whoever did the dodgy concreting job originally!!!

The second log was much the same story, except after breaking the concrete away, the coppers log actually snapped off down at the base of the hole, where a small amount of solid concrete remained. I was happy enough, so we just removed as much concrete as possible, and will bury the remaining piece for someone to dig up and puzzle over in the distant future.


So after three weeks of manual labour every night and weekend, we were finally ready for the big day, which was yesterday (Monday the 6th).

They arrived just after 7:30, and got straight into it. We left 20 mins later, just as they had backed their chipper and truck through our front fence. Whoops. They know we know, 'cause we were standing right there when it happened, so will be interesting to see if they give us a discount on the bill because of it. It's OK - they pushed the broken pailings back into place, and wedged the corner post up with a brick. But the pailing are still broken and will need to be replaced, and now the gate is even harder to close than it was before, so it's all a bit annoying.

Upone arriving home, this is the sight that greeted us:






It's, um, much more open! We were expecting it to look a little bare and a little exposed, but nothing like this! We've regained so much space down the side of the house, and with the fishtales gone, it's really highlighted how large some of the other trees in the backyard are. For instance, the row of palms in the photo above were always considered to be pretty small. Looking at them now, the smallest one is about 5m tall, and they go up from there! So will be some more action here in the near future, since if we leave them too much longer they'll be too big for us to handle ourselves, and we'll need to call in the experts again.

All in all we're very happy with how it's turned out. We've got more work ahead of us - we've got to clean up all the woodchip from the stump grinding, and then get more crusher dust to level it all out and provide a nice ramp for the vehicle access. The the garden behind it will need to be cut back to provide access, and cleaned up since you can see it clearly now! All in good time though.

For now, we ducked down to Bunnings and picked up some lattice that we're going to attach to the fence, and some creepers to grow up over them. Hopefully this will give us back some of our privacy on our back patio now that the shrubs have been cut back and the tree removed.


The creeper is Orange Trumpet Vine which should be quite pretty when it's flowering, is nice and bushy, and relatively fast growing, yet not too adventerous and will stay relatively confined to it's bit of garden. Eventually this section of fence will need to be replaced with nice new colourbond panels, as it's pretty wobbly as it is, but this should tide us over until such time as funds are available for that.

Check back later in the week - we hope to have the lattice panels up and the creepers planted!