Opening the backyard...

This blog adventure begins with our 4th of July trip to the Little Rock Zoo, and some neat metal sculptures they've recently added (above).  One of the other residents (and, apparently, an art critic) seems somewhat skeptical of this work:

We spent the 4th of July shopping and visiting with friends in Little Rock, prior to going to the downtown for a concert and the fireworks show:

We found a nice patch of ground and set up until the sun set, spending quite a bit of time people watching:

We hadn't gone to a fireworks show in a while because one of our kids is somewhat scared of the loud noises (they did fine this year, though).  I wish I had a better angle at where the fireworks were going off, but I was able to get one or two good pix...

 

I took most of the next day (Friday) off, and we visited a couple museums with the kids:

Below, Beth investigates a display of "stuffed" critters native to Arkansas:

Yes, it would seem that opossum has some liquid refreshments in mind...Later in July, I took another day off and we visited a couple more museums to finish up the Civil War sesquicentennial tour of Arkansas.  The picture below is of an antebellum house in Camden, Arkansas that has been preserved by a local historical group:

Our big event for this month just wrapped up this afternoon...  Those of you who have visited us will recall our backyard has three rather large loblolly pines shading one corner...While we like the shade, they are large and loom over our house and power lines, making us nervous every time a storm blows up.  They also drop LOTS of pine needles, cones, and small branches, leaving considerable messes to clean up every year.  Below, Hope stands next to the biggest of these pines, which was over two feet in diameter:

Notice how I just referred to them in the past tense...The last couple days have witnessed a flurry of activity with a local crew of tree trimmers slowly removing the trees one branch at a time:

 

They actually made pretty quick work of these 75+ foot tall pine trees, with the help of a bucket truck that could carry them to the tops of the pines:

Once the branches were gone, they cut the upper parts of the tree trunk away 2-3 feet at a time.  This helped to keep big pieces from falling where they didn't want them to go:

It was a squeeze to get their truck into our backyard, and they bumped up against our power and cable lines frequently (don't worry, they were adequately insulated):

Below is a picture of Diego Rivera, the gentleman who owned the tree removal and lawn care company that did the job.  We've known Diego and his family for years, as we go to church together:

 

They cut the trees down until about 20 foot tall stubs remained, which they then cut the more conventional way.  They spent most of today cleaning up the branches and pieces of the trunk, and then used a stump grinder (pictured on left, in front of the shed) to remove the big stumps:

So now we have a much more open backyard!  We plan to plant a couple smaller hardwood trees, perhaps some flowering dogwoods, to replace these big pines.  The biggest of the pines remains along our fence (you can see it at the right of the picture above).  Diego's crew will pick up their remaining equipment tomorrow morning, and we'll worry about the landscaping after we return...