Monday 10/22/07 - Cutting the front yard tree down

There has always been a small puddle in the street in front of my house. One day the water started flowing out of the crack in the street. The city came and put an orange cone by it.
A few days later, when we came home the city workers were in front of my house taking away the last part of the huge tree that stood between the sidewalk and the street. They had two huge double dump trucks (one dump truck pulling another). All four trucks were full. They said that when they start to cut open the street to repair the leak, they couldn't risk cutting a root and hurting the tree. If the tree had fallen on my house, it would have destroyed most of my house. I was glad that they were being careful, but sad to see the tree go. The gas company had also come and marked where their lines were. A few days later another group came and cut open the street.
When the repair work was done, they said that it was a large pipe that took all of the water from the neighborhood by us. They were able to put bands around the pipe and not replace it. He said that if it had not been fixed there would have been enough water pressure to take out the front of my house.
They put a black-top patch over the road (this was at the end of last fall) When they cut the area of the road, they also took out the curb. I was glad that it was fixed, but it looked awful. The man said that it was too cold to put cement in, it wouldn't dry. They would come back in the spring to fix it correctly. I was upset. I was starting to think about moving my family to a new house and the road in front of my house was all patched up. I decided not to panic. They might come back and repair it before we moved. I still needed to do a lot of painting inside, and take items to storage...so that we didn't look so cluttered.The City people came back in the spring, fixed the street and the curb. There was still a ditch between the yard and the new curb. After the curb dried they came back and filled in the ditch with dirt and seeded it. It settled. They came back again and added more dirt and added more grass seed. I had been so worried, and now it looks so nice.