Winter Work

The lack of regular maintenance work on the winter opens me up for some other projects. This one has been on the docket for a while, waiting for the go ahead from the homeowner. We got the word just before Christmas to go ahead. Matt was still in town, so that was a huge help having an extra hand.

This family lost a bunch of trees in the tornadoes last April. He went from a pretty wooded lot, to primarily turf. He wanted to get some new trees going to add some shade to his yard and house, mainly to reduce the power bill. In order to reach that goal more quickly, he wanted bigger specimens of the trees than you typically get from nurseries. So I called my friend Jesse at Hunter Trees to get some bigger trees. I had to find out how big I could go and still handle them without any heavy equipment. He told me the ones I were looking at had about 300lbs root balls. Trees are also like diamonds in the sense that the bigger you get the trees get exponentially more expensive. So double in tree size means, more than double in cost most of the time.

Matt took on the laborious task of digging most of the holes while I picked up the plants. He made good use of our new augers which helped with the task. The yard was flat and the hole locations close to the trailer, which made for fairly easy install once the holes were dug. It ended up being a fun project and took just over a day to complete.

The trees on the trailer.

A finished hole, ready for a tree.

One ginkgo in the front yard to eventually provide shade for most of the house.

One 'Degroots Spire' Arborvitae to accent the corner of the house.

Three 'Steeplechase' Arborvitaes to create a screen between driveways.

Three crepe myrtles to shade the sidewalk and the house.

Two Burfordi hollies to fill in between existing hollies. These were not that large of a specimen.

Priase You in this Storm

Rebecca and I rode out the storm almost wondering why it was so calm at our house. As we ate dinner and watched the live stream of a Tornado, it was like watching a movie, yet going through areas just miles from our house. Relative to other areas we were never really in danger. It barely rained, the wind was not bad, and we never lost power. As we watched we knew so many people were hurting, yet what could we do? As the pictures and videos rolled in, the destruction we knew would be there was now evident on our TV. "Warzone," "bomb exploded," "destroyed," were as common phrases as "what's for dinner?" These type of images and phrases are pretty frequent on a global scale, but to realize how close it is to you and how it easily could have been you, puts it in a whole new perspective.

Why were there lives thrown into an uproar and mine spared is such an easy question to conclude. I have to remind myself that we all deserve this and much more, and we will all face this in one way or another. Our sinful nature will ultimately lead to eternal destruction and turmoil if not for the saving grace of Jesus Christ. The destruction from the storms paints such a clear picture to me of how putting our hope in anything else can be taken away in a minute. Houses, cars, and other possessions that people spend their whole lives working for can instantly become worthless. Having these things is fine, but how much more valuable to invest time in loving God and loving people.

I woke up this morning planning on going to work like any other day. I am behind on my yards from the bad weather so I was anxious to get caught up. While I was eating breakfast, I scrolled through the news photos and each one striking at my heart. I continued on to my parents house, but felt so weird about taking care of mostly cosmetic needs from my customers, when there were so many who had real needs that were much more pressing. My dad is on the chainsaw team of the Birmingham Baptist Association Disaster Relief Team and was meeting up with them this morning. I debated in my mind for just a minute more, and then decided to tag along with them for the day.  My yards were such that they can wait another day, so I made myself available to help. One of the benefits of being self-employed is the ability to be able to do this. I'm so glad I was able to help even if it only was to a few people.

Here's a map to show how close the houses with massive destruction were to my parents

The really bad areas of town that are constantly on the news are not open to volunteer relief yet because they are still in first responder search and rescue mode. So we went to four houses over the course of the day that are so close to my parents house, yet by the destruction felt like a different world. All of them had numerous trees down in their yard and on their house. As volunteers we aren't allowed to work on trees that are affecting the house for insurance purposes, but everything else is fair game. The association has a trailer full of chainsaws and we got to work. All the houses we went to were extremely grateful. You can sense their sheer overwhelmed feeling from the destruction and the relief to see somebody come to help. Again it points you to the gospel of being overwhelmed by your sin, and there is a perfect Savior willing to help you.

Pines, oaks, sweetgums, tulip poplars, it didn't matter the type of tree, they were possible victims. Here are just a few photos from our days activities and other houses around. There is still so much more work to be done.

A good reminder to move my car away from trees during a storm

This guy told me he was asleep when this happened

Tim Herrington showed up at the last house with a food trailer to feed the neighborhood. A great time of fellowship to lots of people hurting.