The tree is gone! :)

Remember me griping about (ahem) the bitchy contractor? Well, a different contractor gave me a specific date and time they would arrive to quote, showed up on the dot, gave me a very reasonable price, discussed all the different options for dealing with things like removing the stump and what to do with the chippings, phoned up to reschedule and apologised when the weather prevented them from showing up as planned, etc etc - completely different to Mister Tantrum. :) The tree is now gone, and not only did they agree that it was a STUPID tree to plant where it was, one of them told me he thought it was a bit of a mutant. He agreed that it was definitely a Manchurian Pear, but apparently they're not usually as twiggy and interwoven as this one was; he said it looked like about half of its multiple trunks were coming up from beneath the graft, so it was actually partly rootstock gone wild! They did an excellent job of taking it down in sections so that nothing could fall on anything important, and the poor guy who climbed up it to top all the mini-trunks had to practically shave it with his chainsaw before he could get between all the shaggy twigs. XD

My one regret is that I didn't take before and after pictures. :P Ah well. They saved a few nice branches at my requests, and I'm sure Flambe (my rainbow lorikeet) will love them as perches when his aviary gets built. :)

In other news, we've had some serious rain and wind storms recently. About a week ago we had INSANE thunder and lightning, and discovered the next day that lightning struck ONE KILOMETRE AWAY FROM US, blowing up a gas pipe and forcing a bunch of people to evacuate until that was fixed! We're pretty sure we know the exact moment that happened, too - there was a HUGE boom and rumble that we at first thought was a really impressive sound effect in the movie we were watching, until I realised my chair was shaking. Hubby's sound system is good, but it's not THAT good. XD That plus the insane winds we've had the last couple of nights have lead to our wobbling fence starting to fall down in earnest, so it's a good thing we've already ordered its replacement, isn't it? :D