Farewell

Today, we finally bid adieu to the oldest and grandest tree in our backyard. 

Sorry for the dark picture.  It's hard to tell but it's at least 70 to 80 feet tall and takes 3 people to stretch arms around its trunk.

It was struck by lightening a few years ago, and according to the tree expert that is it's inevitable death sentence.  So even though it still had plenty of leafy limbs, it is essentially dead.  It has been dropping some rather large & dangerous branches lately with several more hazardous ones barely hanging on.  It was time for it to go. 

The huge 30 ft branch that came down with the last storm.

While it is sad to see it be cut down, we really enjoyed watching the spectacle and grandeur of the tree service.  No large trucks and big equipment.  They basically had one tree climber guy, the monkey man, who climbed all over the place with a few ropes and some spiky shoes and did most of the cutting.  There were several other crew men who helped with ropes and chainsaws too.

They stripped it down to just a 50 ft pole.  Then they cut into her trunk about 3 ft off the ground and just let her fall.  It was really cool to watch!  (Sorry but I yelled loud at the end of the video clip!)

Then I had fun snapping some pictures of it all.  'R' joined in and helps put the magnitude and size of this tree in perspective.

The lighting doesn't show the stump well, but it is basically as tall as her!

The stone that took down the giant!

Half our yard is filled with tree carnage!

Farewell our leafy friend!  Thank you for your shade as you lived and the entertainment as you died!