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Big crashing noises at 3:45 a.m. seldom bode well.  Ours is the house to the right, which you can just see if you squint real hard through the branches.

Fortunately, no one was hurt, and only very minimal damage was done to the house.  It did bring down the power line, so there was that, but since it was a cool, nice day, it was a very minor inconvenience.

The tree company showed up with their smallest crane.

It was huge.

It barely squeezed up the driveway.  They made such short work of that entire tree, we couldn’t believe it.  They had the most amazing chipper.  We stood, jaws dropped, as the workers directed limb after HUGE limb into that thing, and it acted like they were toothpicks.

As we watched, the entire tree, save for the very largest part of the trunk, was pulverized into small chunks.

And if you know me, you know what I was thinking: MULCHMULCHMULCHMULCH!!!!

Since the tree company has to pay about $100 to dump a load of wood chips, it didn’t take much convincing to get them to leave the contents of the chip truck in our yard.

Now I have a whole tree’s worth of wood chips in a pile, a mountain, in the yard.

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Here’s the thing.  Look again at the mulch mountain and notice the steam coming off the mountain peak.

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The tree was completely leafed out, so mixed in with a whole tree of fresh wood chips is a whole tree’s worth of fresh green leaves as well.

It’s a hot compost pile.

What do I do with it? Do I let it alone and let it compost?  How long would that take?  Do I go ahead and use it for mulch?

My first thought is to let it go ahead and go through a heat and cool cycle and see what’s going on in the center by then.  Then reevaluate.

If anyone has experience with this sort of thing, I’d love to hear your story.