Our Pine Tree Bonfire

A month or so again, one of the pine trees lining our driveway died. We noticed it, but hadn't discussed what to do about it when a man stoppped by and told us we needed to cut it down and burn it or our other trees would die. He, of course, wanted the job, but encouraged us to do it even if we didn't hire him.

It didn't take Kansas Dad long to realize this was a perfect opportunity to tune up his chainsaw (a very generous gift from his brother) and build a huge fire.

There it goes:

And here's the fire:

I missed the beginning of it, which was apparently rather impressive. Kansas Dad was a little worried about the tree branches of the next tree when the pine needles all went up at once, but it very quickly died down.

Second Daughter was enthralled (almost too enthralled):

If you're interested in learning more about pine wilt, you can read about it here and here. We didn't send a sample in for official testing, but it does seem to describe what happened to our poor tree. Hopefully we've saved the others from those evil nematodes.