If a tree falls in the forest . . .

When we first moved into our house in Summer 2006, we had a beautiful 50 foot tree in the backyard. It was great because, while the base of the trunk was in the backyard, it grew at an angle such that the top was over the middle of the house. So it provided some nice shade over the yard and the roof. The pictures below attempt to show what I mean, though when we first moved in, it was much greener and more full than what is shown here.










Ever since we moved in, we would find small branches littered across the lawn after any rain or slight wind. The fallen branches were small and the tree looked healthy, so we didn't think much of it. Over time, however, the volume and size of branches falling to the yard seemed to increase with each rain. And then we noticed that the tree had several branches that had stopped producing leaves.

Toward the end of the summer of 2007, we decided to have a tree guy come look at it and tell us if he thought we could salvage the tree by trimming out the dead branches and give it a deep root fertilization. He agreed that it would help and made and offer to do the work. We, of course, did nothing.

The following spring, the tree started leaving later than any of the trees in the neighborhood. More than half of the branches did not produce any leaves, and those that did had leaves that were wilted and brownish. Finally, a fairly sizable branch came down on the back lawn and Tara, the wise, instructed me that I better call the tree dude back and get it trimmed up, or possible cut down, before any other big branches came down.

Me, being the typical awesome husband, disobeyed Tara's commands for about 6 weeks, just on principle. As you might expect, I should have only procrastinated for 5 1/2 weeks as a large branch gave way and put a nice hole in the roof over our back patio.





So we finally had a guy come out to hack it down recently. It took him 3 days - the first day he was rain delayed after a couple of hours, the second day he got it down to the stump, and the last day he ground said stump and hauled off the last 10 feet of the trunk.





I think he underestimated the job a wee. On the second day, he said to me with a tone of despair "This is a big tree." I didn't realize exactly how big it was either until I drove off to work and looked back the the house to see the worker half way up the tree. I called Tara and told her to take a picture of the guy and she dutifully did so.





Needless to say, it was a sad day at the fontee house the day we lost our tree. We promptly planted a new tree in the back to replace it. It should only take about 100 years so to grow as large as the one we just dropped. So we got that going for us, which is nice.