Murphy's Law

We hired a 'professional' tree cutter to take down the 60 ft. aging blue spruce tree next to our house. All they had to do was get it on the ground and we would cut it up and bring it into the woods.

"What can go wrong" you ask? It was a perfect landing...on top of our lamp post, which completely exploded! At least they felt bad and charged us about a 5th of what we expected.

The clean up was massive for this tree that had split and grown into two, then further up, grown into three pieces. All the cutting and hauling of the lower branches in 85 degree humid heat was intense (bad timing for this project).

Hercules (the Ford 555) and the New Holland tractor came to the rescue. Herc dragged the tree in three sections out to the woods, and the New Holland helped with the rest of the dirty clean up, including hundreds of sticky pine cones thrown everywhere...until it refused to start. It took about an hour of time investigating as the sun was setting, but it ended up being a simple fix once diagnosed, and the mission was complete at dark. Luckily it wasn't a case of deja vu when Herc stopped running a few years ago while hauling another tree away, and had to have the engine rebuilt....twice.

Later, Dave checked on Craig's List and there was a three light lamp post for sale similar to ours! The base was even the same and will fit right in the same base. Now we just have to stop having more fun in the water to install it. No more worries about the gigantic tree falling on the house, garages, or rehabbed garden shed.