Root of All Evil

Do you remember this tree?
http://cagarners.blogspot.com/2011/04/story-of-eucalyptus-tree.html

Well, it has taken a very long time to clean up after it.  We moved rocks (really big rocks) from all over the front and back yards to stabilize the hill on the corner.  We used a winch, cable, a dolly, and boards to ski the rocks across the grass.  It was hard work and took a few weeks to actually get them all moved out front.

Davis helped us move rocks around the yard.

The rock "skis" across the grass while Chris cranks the winch.

Placing the biggest rocks first.

Building rock cairns with rocks that haven't been embedded in the hill yet.

While we were digging places to set the rocks we found huge roots left over from the eucalyptus tree.  We chopped, sawed, dug, and also tried to pull the roots out with the winch.  Crazy.  One root was not going to budge.  So, it was time to take drastic action.

 We banked the fire with rocks all around and covered the top with the grill cover so you couldn't see any flames from the road as it got dark.  We stayed outside watching it for a couple hours until the coals died down (it took a long time for the flames to settle down because the eucalyptus bark has a lot of oil in it).  While we were outside we saw a police patrol car drive by 4 times - each time from a different direction through the intersection.  Oh yeah, we didn't have a permit for this.  It was like they had received a call that someone in the neigborhood was building fires in their front yard...  So, either they never actually saw the fire, or they saw it was little and that we were watching it (from the front steps) so they didn't want to bother with it.  We ended up leaving it burning overnight.
  In the morning it was still smoking but the root had burned through enough that a couple of blows with the sledge hammer broke it off.  We thought we were getting off easy having the tree blow over in the storm and the city cleaning up most of it.  It took another day of digging to get all the auxilliary roots out so we could place the rocks.  Now we have to finish putting in the sprinklers around that area and then we can plant.  
  Nothing to do with the root - here's a picture of the new quilt Chris' mom made that we are "storing" on our bed (It's not good to have quilts folded for too long so it's best to lay them out flat and Carol didn't have room to lay this one out on a bed at her house.)  Isn't it great?