At the start of our Christmas display set-up we had planned to string long sections of lights all the way down our 40′ spruce tree out front, thus creating the ultimate mega-tree. As fate would have it, we could not make that happen without renting a bucket truck twice a year just to reach the top. Since that would run us about $700 annually, we opted not to use the tree in our display. After this setback we started throwing around the idea of removing the tree all together and using that side of the yard for a more elaborate display next year. Well, there is a guy that comes into the Caribou Coffee I work at every day for his morning coffee and he happens to own his own landscaping company so, I asked for a quote. It was a fair price for removing such a large tree so we decided to go ahead and have it cut down. It turned out that the day that worked for him was Marc’s birthday. Not the best present I could have gotten for him, but it was big and expensive (that makes it good, right?).  It took him around 4 hours to cut the whole thing down and he had to use 5 different chainsaws to get the job done. Pretty impressive to watch plus, he did all that without damaging our Christmas display! I have below some before, during, and after pictures of the process. It happened to snow the day after it came down, so that was marvelous timing.

Yard with the tree

Tree with all branches removed

Yard with no giant tree covering the house