Sadly, the largest tree in the back garden died a couple of years ago, dropping all leaves mid season (August) and then last summer the bark started falling from the trunk. We decided to have it taken down before it fell of its own accord, potentially causing much damage as it did so.

Our first quote to take it down was around £3,000 to take it and another large conifer down (that had suffered badly during winter storms and that was listing by over 40 degrees. So we approached online service bark to come to help us obtain additional quotes, and quickly found a guy offering to sort both trees for just £600. He came a couple of days later, was in the garden for 15 minutes before stating that he (and his mate) would need a larger chain saw and that he would be back in approx 90 minutes. Thankfully we never saw or heard from them again as they had clearly realised that this was a job too big for them. Jonny, our car detailer, who just happened to be sorting the cars out was in disbelief, having witnessed the way they work…. Apparently, the two of them simply got their chain saw out and began to hack away at the big tree from about 3ft up….. we have no idea how they thought that this was the appropriate strategy and that maybe their tree felling training had come from watching Elmer Fudd cartoons….

We found another company via Bark who came out, checked the trees and offered to do the work for just over £1,200 and that it could be done later the same week. Fab

So, he and his team of 3 came, one of which spend nearly 5 hours roped up in the tree as they systematically took it down, starting close to the top. They took away the smaller branches and left us with the wood that we can burn over the next few years in the log burner.

Yesterday, we moved the wood from the large pile they left in the garden over to the newly designated chopping area – the large discs of tree are up to 3ft in diameter and wow, are they heavy.

We now have a small fort of wood surrounding Elliot’s car, which is going to take a LOT of manual chopping up. Of course we then need to move it around to the log store in the front garden in readiness for the autumn. A new axe has been obtained and we can make a start next weekend. Suspect Simon is going to be “enjoying” back challenges this spring… 🙁

we got the first of the car insurance renewal prices through this week…

Vicky’s car has gone from £1150 last year to £1900 this.. 🙁

a little research has enabled us to save almost £1000 – all she needs is this thing called a black box…..

Apparently this is not something that is going to be happening any time soon so we accept a new policy for £1100 – happily this brings a handy £50 reduction on last year

not got Simon’s renewal yet, but compare the market suggests that we can get a policy for similar price to last year so that feels like a win in the current climate