Believe it or not, today I actually met Bobby, the tree guy.  Not only did I meet him, he made significant progress!

It looks like I owe Bobby an apology for doubting his sincerity and work ethic.

It turns out that he has been climbing trees and cutting them down for a living for 19 years.  He started when he was 14 and climbed his first tree when he turned 17.

Nineteen years of physical labor and working outdoors has chiseled not only his muscles, but also the features of his face.

He arrived around eleven am.

He wore faded jeans and a grey muscle man t-shirt, and the slight swagger in his stance contradicted the modesty in his eyes.

“Hi, I’m Bobby, the tree guy,”  he said.

The large truck and green chipper in front of my house were a pretty good clue to his identity, but I appreciated knowing that he wasn’t some random guy with a chainsaw standing on my front porch.

“Sorry I didn’t get here until now, Bobby apologized. “Between the rain and my messed up chipper this is the first day that worked out.  I’m a tree guy, without a chipper there’s not much I can do. It was horrible when I was here last time, it kept overheating and smoke was coming out everywhere.

“I told the guys at the shop I thought it was the thermostat.

“Turns out it was a belt. It was so worn out there wasn’t enough tension so the pump wasn’t pissn’ out enough water to cool off the motor.Of   course instead of doing what mechanics should do, which is to figure out what’s wrong before they fix it.  They just went ahead and took my word for it, so now I have a new thermostat as well.

“What were they thinking?  I’m a tree guy, they’re the mechanics. Sheesh!”

I had to laugh about that.  I told him he should have sent it into the shop with a woman, because the mechanics never would have taken her word for it.

I found the process fascinating.  Who knew how complicated it was to take down a tree.

I held my breath as I watched him maneuver through the tree.  30 feet above ground, held by nothing but a rope, he sawed through one branch after another and artfully worked with his crew of two to drop each one to the ground.

It was like Paul Bunyan meets Cirque Du Soleil and it all happened right in my  front yard.

The job isn’t complete yet.  He said he’ll be back on Monday.

We’ll see if Monday actually happens.  If not, I feel fairly certain that, there will be a valid reason and in the end, he may not have meant ‘this week’, but I’m pretty sure it will be ‘this year’.

Operation tree removal continues.