Like that tree from Avatar only smaller, dingier and filled with ants...

Woody and I finally saw Avatar last weekend. How appropriate to see a film entirely about a rotted out tree when we too had one in our backyard. Once again, James Cameron has tapped into the very essence of our being... Thank you, King of the World, for validating us.

We knew the tree outside the back bedroom had problems when Brian chopped off a limb only to be met with a swarm of carpenter ants:


Here's a closer view of the deathly hollows of our tree:


Yeah, not so much with the luminescent blue-skinned people. More with the gaping maw full of carpenter ants.

We had the tree pulled down on the cheap and took out neighbor Steve's fence, our wheelbarrow, Woody's custom made sawhorses and some new landscaping in the process. So much for saving some dough. It sat in our yard for while we worked hard, went to BBQ competitions and sundry dry academic conferences, but we have been whittling away at it for a couple of weekends now. It has been reduced to this:


It turned out that it was not a little rotten, it was a LOT rotten. Like, if the Avatar folks were Smurf-sized they could have seriously lived in there. Comfortably.


We generated a HUGE pile of sticks, which the city thankfully took away. Here is a smaller pile and the giant firewood pile that resulted:


(This is not near our house or anyone else's house, so no worries about termites.)

We are turning the very hollow stump into a planter. We'll probably later sublet it to little Navi if we're hard up for cash.