Goodbye, Old Tree

I was surprised the other morning when looking out the kitchen window to see the top of a tree being lifted into the air. The neighbor four houses down had determined, for whatever reason, to have the tree removed. The tree was probably 100 feet tall, so it was one of the older ones in the neighborhood. I am always saddened when I see a tree being cut down. We have had to remove two trees from our back yard. One had been infected and eventually weakened and fell onto our house. Fortunately no damage. The other, originally a live Christmas tree, had grown too big and was infringing on our neighbor's yard.

The tree removal from our neighbor's yard was fascinating to watch. The tree surgeon, if that's the correct title, had scaled the tree and removed most of the limbs before I was aware of the operation. A truck with a crane was parked in the front of the property and a cable from the top was used to lift the sections of tree and swing them, above the house and deposit them in the front of the house. The sawyer had a loop around the trunk of the tree and I presume was wearing spikes. I had a little experience with this sort of thing when I worked on a pole line construction job in Montana as a lad just out of high school. I climbed several poles that were just about the heighth of that neighbor's tree. I continued to watch as he sawed sections about six to eight feet long and the crane lifted them out of the yard.

I suppose the removal was necessary. Perhaps it had been weakened or gotten too big. It's difficult to grow anything beneath an evergreen tree that large. The sun is shut out and the roots take all the moisture and energy out of the soil. There is no place to grow flowers or vegetables. Still I hated to see it go. Fortunately there are several other tall trees within sight of the kitchen window. Goodbye, old tree.