There's a bobcat on my lawn

[iamangelachase]

The final stage of tree removal happened today. After the trees came down several weeks ago, the stumps were left alone for a while. Last week, small construction horses appeared near them, and on Saturday the ones by us were ground down. I happened to be gone when it happened and was stunned that the city would work on a Saturday. As it turned out, this part was contracted out; the people returned today to finish off the stumps across the street. The grinder they used was interesting; it was like a small zamboni with a chipper wheel at the front of it. The worker stood on the side behind protective glass and guided the wheel through the stump, back and forth until it had all chipped away. What happened over the weekend was that the chips were just left on the ground, but today there were a couple guys who scooped up all the chips, loaded them into a bobcat, then put them into the back of a flatbed. There's now a decent-sized but shallow hole in the ground wherever a tree had been.

All that's left to do now is decide what to plant where the ashes had been. Rumor has it that we'll only get one tree to replace the two; I've had a note to call the city to check on that for a couple weeks yet, but I haven't gotten to it. It still is weird to look outside at times, but we're getting used to it. Also, I've realized that we can now see the baseball diamond at the local park. We have a clear shot at it from the porch. I've heard ball games from there for the past few summers but didn't realize just how close they were to us, or that they basically faced our house. Such interesting things pop up when you no longer have something blocking your way.