Hug a Tree

Sad news for a tree hugger like me: we had to have a huge maple taken down in our backyard.  The ginormous silver maple sitting smack dab in the middle of the backyard was slated for trimming by the power company, on account of our old-man-next-door-neighbor down the line complaining to them that his power was flickering (picky, picky!). 



Big 'Ol Mr. Silver Maple
is in the background of this old shot of my perennial bed



A couple of weeks ago, a very nice tree trimming guy subcontracted by our power company comes to my door and tells me they need to trim the big maple but that it's seen better days, is showing signs of internal decay, and that if I want to the power company will go ahead and have them remove it (at no cost to us) because it's a 'hazard tree' to their lines.  I asked around and it sounds like a tree that big would probably cost us at least $1,000 to have cut down otherwise, and no doubt it's gotta go eventually, so better on their dime than ours.  (Honestly, I wish they'd have taken the other already-severely-broken-in-a-previous-storm silver maple closer to the house too, but that one will only hit our house when it falls, not their power line, so they don't care...). 



Work begins on Monday, June 6th



Part way done

Lord knows that tree has been here probably twice as long as I've been alive, if not longer. 

One bit of good news is now we have a shockingly wide open view of the rest of our backyard, which is kind of growing on me: 

June 7th. It's all down, and quite a disaster area.



Looking ahead, we'll now have room to plant some other shade trees that are stronger-growing than silver maples and will diversify our yard.  The skinny red maple to the left of the cut tree in the photo has tons more breathing room and hopefully will survive the hack job it got to keep it from the lines as well.  We also have a large ash next to our patio that I'm worried about losing eventually to Emerald Ash Borer, so I feel like we ought to get some other shade trees started out back somewhere soon.  I'd really like some oaks, but will probably be dead before they're majestic enough to fill the back yard the way that maple did.  The best time to plant a tree is always twenty years ago. 

Today, June 8th, after they cleaned up and chipped the small stuff.  Looking much better!

More good news: a huge flippin' pile of free mulch, since they chipped all the branches and let me keep 'em!  Hooray!

  The three-man crew will be back one more day tomorrow to finish cutting up the logs into literally tons of firewood that they leave behind as well.  They are really doing a thorough job.  Anybody want to come over for a bonfire?  Pretty much any night, possibly every night, for the next 10 years or so?