Another in an interminable series of progress shots. This one shows more of the top border.

Although I was iffy about it when I first began, I think that it’s working now. Yes, introducing another motif makes the piece rather busy, but in spite of that – I like it. To be immodest, I’ve been scouring the web looking for filet crochet work, and I haven’t seen anything remotely like this – either for complexity of the motifs, or scale of the project. It’s going to look killer on the front door window.

Now to finish out the top and bottom edges. I promise no more incremental photos until (at least) the top edge is finished.

Tree Today, Gone Tomorrow

Some pix of my de-treeing. This majestic 35-year old spruce was certainly pretty from this angle, but it was planted two feet away from the house. It was leaning on my walls and roof, and its roots were invading the basement. It’s sad, but the spruce had to go.

(Sorry about the shot of my neighbor’s SUV.)

Likewise two four-story tall Norway maples in the back yard were given honorable discharges. In their case, they were completely hollow – to the point where the remaining ring of their trunks was about an inch thick. Both had canted, and were looming over my garage and my neighbor’s house. They were disasters poised to happen.

The treeguy used a boom crane to extract them from a tight space, lifting the pieces up and over the house and sparing injury to the surrounding trees. The eighth-of-a-tree limb that’s flying here looks small, but once down on the ground it looked every inch of about 20 feet – larger than some entire free-standing trees. Given yesterday’s winds and the number of branches down in my neighborhood (the result of the last anemic puff from passing hurricane fragments) I’m delighted that the hazard was removed just in time. Plus, I’ve still got six healthy maples and locusts in the back yard, one so huge it dwarfed the two that were taken out.