We have no rain in the forecast for today and fingers crossed, tomorrow too. The huge hickory tree is being dismantled as I type. This one I’m guessing is over a hundred years old. The base diameter is about 3.5 to 4 feet wide. It’s a beautiful tree but rotten about 15’ up. You can see water poring through it in the back side when it rains. It’s on a hillside, so the roots aren’t so good. Very dangerous.
This may be a two day project. The tree guy asked if he could use some of the garden space underneath it for setting down the larger parts of the trunk. That means after the guys in the one grappler truck are finished that I have to start digging out any shrubs I want to try to save, like a brunnera, a bleeding heart, a peony, and a meadow rue. It will be too sunny over in the meditation garden after this. I may have to change the name from meditation garden because it won’t be a shady spot anymore.
I’ve requested for the hickory to not be cut all the way down, so that I can use the top of what’s left as a planter for annuals. They are cutting down the larger pieces into 15-16” slices so that hubby and I can split soon, and get it seasoning for firewood in another year.
Well, first report is in. One of the smaller branches at the top of the tree is 70 years old! So I’m going to guess that this tree is at least 150 years old, if not many more years. I’m going to miss it!
Four months after we bought our place (last spring), we had 5 trees taken down. Four were dead, one was live. The live tree was a gigantic pine, leaning towards the house. If it had come down, it would have taken out a lot of slate roof & the front wall, if not rooms of the house. The top of the root ball was visible. It had already dropped a couple of branches that missed the roof & were big enough to be small trees! A very scary tree. The tree guy brought his Spyder, but ended up having enough room to just fell the tree & cut it up on the ground. When the tree hit the ground, you could feel it - I was dancing from the safety of the kitchen bay windows because every time the wind blew hard, my stomach was in a knot.
The worst of the 4 dead trees was threatening our power lines. Two would have come down on the driveway & blocked it. The 4th was a pine & right where we turn into the driveway - a real eyesore & the first thing you saw of our place. This pine started dying in January within 2 weeks of closing on the place :-(
We did not think to look at the trees when we looked at the house - it was December so other than the pines, it was hard to tell what was dead & what was not.
After 2 years of bad drought, a huge chestnut in the back died last summer & we’ve lost about a 4th of the Leyland Cypress trees that screen out a house on the property behind us. I have trimmed a LOT of branches with a cheapie battery pole saw. My brother just got a good one & bought a 3 foot extension. He’s coming here to trim what I can’t reach. I have the chainsaw to cut big stuff into manageable pieces. He is also going to help me fell the big dead chestnut which is going to be a dangerous job, but we have room to do it & will put a line on it so it falls the right way. After 16 years of swamping for the AT sawyers, I have a lot of respect for trees & chainsaws & the weird things that can happen. I don’t think you can be overly cautious but that’s where I am rather than being a risk taker.
That will be a relief when that hazardous tree is gone. That’s the only problem with wooded property - it takes some $$$ to maintain it safely.
We have 15 or so Black Walnut trees in the pasture marked ‘for sale’ by a guy that wants to harvest and buy them. As soon as we had him bid on them, the price for BW dropped like a rock, (in HALF!) so they’re going to grow for another few years until prices go back up. We’re in no hurry. They are not a danger to any cows or any buildings. ;) The pricing had something to do with the Tariffs, though. China suddenly had a bunch of Black Walnut lumber to sell to America before they kicked in. These are trees that Beau planted just by scattering a bucket of nuts down there, 35 years ago. I also had a row of BW trees lining the driveway at my other farm. I sold three of them, closest to the house, for a decent profit before I put the farm on the market. I wasn’t giving away ALL my hard work of 25 years, LOL!
I had a planter like you’re wanting in the front when we took down an old Cottonwood tree. Wave Petunias filled it up nicely. It’s disintegrated by now, but I got a good 5 years out of it. Before it was a planter the stump was a favorite place for that years litter of puppies to play, ‘King of the Mountain.’ :)