Cutting down a dead tree in our Backyard

We have lots of trees between our house and the golf course. This summer the golf course sold us more of that green space to be included in our backyard. So, now that that land is ours, James was bound and determined to cut down a couple dead trees in our backyard. He set out early to do this, but with one distraction and "honey do" to another, he wasn't able to get to it until 4:30pm yesterday afternoon.

First he tied ropes around the tree and anchored it to two other trees, so that when it came down, it wouldn't fall in the direction of our house or the neighbors' house, or their fence for that matter.

The dead tree...
James with his safety gear and the chainsaw...
Hard at work cutting it down...


Video of Kathie and James trying to get the tree to fall off the stump...

A success of sorts...We finally got it off the stump, but all it did was jump forward. This happened two more times and then got it's upper branches caught in other trees branches. We left it for a moment while James got the chain blade put back onto the chainsaw and it fell (on it's own) onto another little tree, where it broke a major branch, but it didn't land on the neighbor's fence, so we were pleased.

By the time we got that done, there was no sun light to work on the second tree.