Wow. Thanks for that link-that does seem like a tender story. Dealing with loss, kind of a sweet looking story. I may buy a copy for someone I know...
I do like trees, and hate to see them needlessly destroyed, but I am all on board for logging and use of trees for our needs.
And I admit, I had a tree cut down in my front yard that was a perfectly healthy tree, because my wife and I hated the tree. I like trees because I lay in my hammock at night, hearing the wind swishing through them, and during the day I like laying in my hammock and seeing the birds fly around in and through them. My wife is more utilitarian about them, and generally resents raking them, and since she does most of the cleaning of them from the flower beds and such. We usually get about 30 tall paper lawn waste bags from our quarter acre lot, so...I side with her on this.
Anyway, this a$$hole tree, think it it may have been a black walnut (which sounds like a nice tree, and it LOOKED nice...but isn’t) had tiny leaves (each leaflet was perhaps an inch or two long and half an inch to an inch wide) on each side of a long stem. When they fell, they fell onto the driveway, covering the cars, filling the wiper wells and covering the car and windows with these sodden masses of tiny leaves and stems that stuck like glue to everything even after just a slightly dewey morning.
Before you could drive your car, you had to use you hand to scoop handful after handful of the leaves out of the wiper wells and windscreen and throw them with disgust onto the lawn where they were nearly impossible to rake because they were so small and you had to swipe with the rake five times to clear a patch of lawn (versus one swipe for a maple) and then you had to use your hands to pick them up and bag them. Even more annoying, they covered the walkway into the house, which no matter how hard or diligently you wiped your feet, would still get tracked into the house.
Plus, its roots were destroying our driveway and walkway.
Bottom line, we both disliked this tree.
So, even though we weren’t totally committed to having it removed, we started calling around to get quotes. One tree removal company, called “Monkey Men” was scheduled to come out and deliver a quote. We came home, and...the tree was down, cut into pieces! We didn’t approve it, they just did it! We refused to pay them, because we weren’t even sure if we were going to do it, but it was a done deal. We went back and forth, and the Better Business Bureau had some bad things about these guys we hadn’t seen, so we were glad the tree didn’t end up on our house. Ended up getting it cut down for free!
Now it’s gone for many years, we finally replaced the driveway and walkway after all the roots rotted and collapsed, and...we have a very small flowering plum tree there where it used to be. All is good!