My birch is beautiful in the winter. I'd take birch over spruce any day.

I will take a picture, post it here and let people decide. LOL.

You're crazy. I have an awesome 40 something foot spruce. I wouldn't replace it with a birch. A white pine maybe, but not a birch.

---

How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

These are the trees. The spruce go back another 190 feet.
It will be a nice flat spot for the play are that is observable from the main rooms of the house, so it is perfect location for this function.

And there are some relatively hard softwoods... Douglas Fir is about as hard as Alder or Western Maple.

---

Long Chile was a silly place.

sigh, that's so pretty.

We have no back yard. My sister does, with a playhouse, swings, slide the whole shebang. The kids played out there on the equipment for a solid two years. Now, never. Unless there's a heavy snowfall, in which they dig forts.

Maybe it comes down to how long you plan to be in your house, and what you want your view to be like in 1, 2, 5, and 10 years time. I'm all for kids being outside as much as possible, but do they need their own play zone to be happy out there?

Dude! Forget the swing set those trees are close enough together to build an awesome tree fort. WAY better then a boring swing set. Couple different levels with a slide and zip line coming down into the open yard.

~Matt

That is exactly what I was thinking.

Tree fort. All the way.

---

Long Chile was a silly place.

Yes Douglas Fir is a strong, hard softwood. Spruce is another. Spruce was used extensively in aircraft manufacture in the first part of the 20th Century. Birch was also used. Ironically, the spruce goose, built by Howard Hughes, the largest flying boat ever made, was made mostly of birch. Also birch was much used in the de Havilland Mosquito -- in 1941 one of the fastest planes in the world.

So for the OP, cut down all the spruce and birch and build a plane. Much more fun for the kids than a swing set. However, to use the birch, you'll need a veneer mill as birch is commonly used in plywood form.

---

________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

That is exactly what I was thinking.

Tree fort. All the way.

Good, it's settled then. Trees stay and tree fort goes in. We expect pictures.

~Matt

Yeah, he'll be done with the swing by the time he is 6. He'll play with the tree fort until he is 60. Especially if you get paintball guns for the both of you.

---

I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I have 2 more acres of trees better for tree forts. The zipline is in the planning phase already.

I figured out why you are so anti-birch: jealousy. From wikipedia moose entry: A moose's diet often depends on its location, but they seem to prefer the new growths from deciduous trees such as white birch,

---

________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev