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.
Our daughter asked us if we were doing the work, and I told her N-O!!! These are way beyond our skills, and even these men with their huge rigs, saws, grapplers, cranes, and buckets are being careful. These trees are beasts. The meditation garden will be so much more sunny now. I think I’ll eventually plant the persimmon somewhere over there after things settle down.