Category: summer

note: if you are a tree hugger or are emotionally attached to trees generally i would recommend that you skip reading this post!

next to our house a previous owner planted a cedar tree that, this many years later, had grown to be quite big & tall. so big & tall, in fact, that the tree was nearly three times the height of our house, nearly obscured our house from view from the street, & prevented the front lawn from growing very well.

we knew upon the first time seeing the house that this big tree would need at least a good trim since its middle branches were growing in & around all of the utilities lines from the street to our house & our neighbors’ house.

once we started getting quotes on trimming the tree, we realized that it would cost us as much to trim the tree as it would to take the entire thing down. while we both hate to see such a big, beautiful tree in the city go down, we were told by tree experts that it would get bigger – much bigger – so we decided it would have to come down. we also decided that the four smaller trees that were in the side yard should come down as well. they were likely put in to act as a privacy screen for the bedroom that is on that side of the house (our bedroom), but the type of tree & the way they were trimmed didn’t allow for any privacy whatsoever – hello neighbors!

some of you may think we are completely nuts or that we hate trees & are evil people, but we didn’t take this decision lightly & have been mulling over it for months. every time we have been out in the yard since it was taken down on thursday, neighbors & others that have been walking by the house have given us their two-cents about the tree & its demise. there have been mixed reviews, but we have found that people don’t hesitate to let us know their opinion. just this morning an older woman walking by with her dog saw the logs in our lawn & began to shake her head. she asked aaron whether there was something wrong with the tree, to which he replied “it was encroaching onto our house.” she told us that she knew evelyn, the previous owner, likely implying that evelyn would be disappointed in our decision to take down the tree. in truth (& what aaron relayed to this woman) was that evelyn had looked into taking the tree down while she owned this house, but thought it was too cost prohibitive. evelyn’s daughter came by the house shortly after the tree came down & congratulated us on taking it down! so, my point is, you may not agree with the decision that aaron & i made concerning this tree, but we made a decision that worked best for us & for our situation.

enough about the backstory & onto the pictures.

these are the before pictures of the yard with the trees:

{the cedar & the maple that is right next to our house.}

{yep, our little house is in there somewhere!}

{the privacy screen in our side yard.}

these are the during pictures:

{the tree guys brought a wood chipper on-site so our half of the block was shut down.}

{the side yard seems so much bigger without those trees.}

{apparently the cedar was growing a bit crooked – right around that utility line.}

{the guy up in the basket had a small chainsaw & apparently just chucked the cut limbs down to his crew on the ground. as much as i would have liked to see the process, it is better that i wasn’t there to witness the limb-chucking.}

{the stump grinder. i think this was everyone’s favorite part since it ground the stumps into sawdust.}

{the resulting mulch from our downed trees. now we are searching for places to put it! also, look how big that maple is & we didn’t even realize it!}

as all of this work was just completed on thursday, & we were left with a pile of huge logs & mulch in our front yard, we aren’t to the after stage yet. this will be a work in progress, but we are hoping to have some form of completion by the end of the month. we will be sure to get some good after shots of the house (now that you can see it from the street!) & the new front yard.

we put the logs on craigslist (in the free section) & nearly all of them have been picked up. aaron spent the weekend spreading the mulch into the side yard & some of our flowerbeds, but there remains a mound of mulch in our front yard. anyone want some cedar mulch? we have more than enough to share.

do you have any big landscaping projects on your to do list?

M