With a chainsaw. With a big ass chainsaw that goes VRRRROOOOOOOMMMMMM. Or, you could just go out there with a can of glitter spray paint and call it post modernist installation holiday decorations - that would work too.

Big ass chainsaw it is.

We have to go buy one. My husband asked his parents for one for Christmas last year, but they got him a lopper instead. They decided that a chainsaw would be "too dangerous" for him. AAAAHHHHAAAAAHHHAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So your husband is what, about fourteen?

My area lost a great many enormous old trees after a blustery rainstorm this spring. I remember the state of slack-jawed shock this instilled in me, walking around town seeing massive trees toppled over, giant circles of root systems circling their bases.

There is a staggering amount of wood in even a moderate-sized tree. We have had to dispose of 9 trees about 20 metres high and it took forever - I couldn't stand to see them just dumped, so we found a guy that has a portable sawmill who goes around milling logs and taking them away - he is collecting timber to build himself a house, so everyone wins there (including us, because he left us with six bloodwood slabs about 3 metres long, 700mm wide and 75mm thick out of which I will make some furniture). The stuff that couldn't be milled was taken away by a guy that sells firewood and the rest we turned into a massive pile of mulch that we are spreading over the gardens when they exist. The whole process took weeks and weeks - three whole weekends of operating a huge mulcher alone.

I think you'll need more than just a chainsaw.

Holy cow, that's a small fortune in bloodwood, dg. That stuff is *dense* too. Too beautiful to go to waste, good on ya for keeping it.

Chainsaws are no messin' around. When I was a kid, I was helping my dad chainsaw a dead limb off of a tree in the back yard. The limb was hollow, and the mouse that had been living in there somehow jumped out of the limb, hopped up onto the chainsaw body, scurried up dad's arm, over his shoulder, and down his back, and thence to freedom. Scared the living bejeesus out of both of us.

Yeah, each slab would sell in a timber yard for around $1,000. I feel under pressure already to do it justice.