Timber!

We live on a corner lot backed up to a pond.
Below is the view from our back deck towards the street and our large cottonwood tree.

As pretty as it is, I hate it!
It is extremely messy (think cotton fluff sticking to all your window screens) and hubby and some of our kids are allergic to it.  It also shades the "garden" area that we yanked out earlier in the summer.  Actually I paid my oldest son to get rid of it.  I didn't want to do it, and he wanted money.  Win-win for both of us.

The garden spot was a mess, raised bed with rotted wood, lots of weeds, landscape fabric poking out everywhere and horrible location, albeit probably the only realistic place to put a garden on the property. But really with the location of this tree there was just no way anything was ever going to grow there with constant shade.



So the decision was made that it would have to go.



Hubby and I have cut down trees before.
He does the climbing and cutting and I work the ground part hauling stuff out of the way, etc.



About halfway there.



All down on the ground. Big mess to clean up and even after all the wood we kept we had 3 van loads of other branches that we got rid of.



Hubby geared up for safety.  He straps in his safety harness when he gets up high.





So, what is the plan now that it is down?
Well, we are deciding whether or not to put a garden spot back in that same area, and/or we are going to put a fire pit area there.  We have all Fall and Winter to figure it out and tweak the plans.

We also put together a firewood storage station using this idea from Pinterest





and for kindling this one.






Can't split these yet until they dry out for awhile....like next Spring.



We'll see if this stump removal idea works for us.

We drilled all the holes and filled them with Epsom salt.  So here's hoping that this along with a Minnesota Winter will rot it out good so in the Spring we can get rid of it easily.