We Have Tree!!

And it looks super healthy!

Y'all might remember when we were first looking at Chez 3.0 we were pretty worried about the huge, huge tree in the yard that looked dead?

Here's a shot

 

Looks pretty horrible don't it?

 

Well Take a look at it now!!

It does in fact appear to be a black walnut tree. The squirrels are having a field day eating the little proto walnuts...wonder if they are safe to eat for humans?

I just wish that the lower limbs weren't hacked off....those big branches are pretty high up for a tree house...we'll have to see what we can come up with.

There are several little girls who recently moved into the 'hood and who are our back fence neighbors, about the same age as baby madmadscientist, I'd love to do some sort of group family tree house thing.....hmmmmmmm

Ya I know, a post about a tree...but look how healthy it looks!!!!

In Ode To An Old Tree

Looking at the 'birdseye' views of our house on Zillow I realized that they are using a much older picture of our house than Google does. The pic below was taken even before we owned the house.

Whats important to notice is that the big wonderful 100+ yr old boxwood alder tree is in this pic. Look how HUGE it was when it was healthy. Its as tall as our 3 story house and its canopy is like half the length of our house! It was a wonderful tree with very interesting flowers that shaded our yard and made it a nice place to hang out in and cool off.

Here you can see the two illegal outbuildings the jackass back neighbor built that killed the tree. Boy I hope his illegal laundry room and his illegal garage were worth it. We had such grand plans for the tree. Would of made an awesome place for a tree-house.

Here's whats scary to me. See the house right next to the tree with the little bump-out that's really, REALLY close to the tree? That's our neighbors master bedroom where they were sleeping when the tree fell. If that thing had fallen the wrong way it would of totally crushed them in their sleep! Actually, its sorta amazing that nobody got hurt, that the tree fell in exactly the right spot as to not kill anybody...unfortunately our possessions did take a beating.

I wish the tree would of fallen backwards and crushed his illegal outbuildings...that would of been poetic justice. But I guess there is no justice as the complaint I lodged against him with the building dept appears to of gone nowhere...bummer.

what tree? what tent??

At 8:30 this morning the chainsaws started, and they were not even the loudest thing around.

Our neighbor was able to find a tree service that could come out on a holiday Monday and haul away the tree carcass, in the form of little chips of wood.

Very few people in the neighborhood heard it fall or saw the giant tree in our backyard, so unfortunately everyone just thought we were chopping down a tree really loudly at the crack of dawn on a holiday..

This was the view from the front of the house.

There were 4 guys working (in the pouring rain, on a holiday, really hard): one had the chainsaw in the tree and the other 3 would grab the branches...

.. and bring them up front, and toss them into the wood chipper...

.. which would spew chips of what used to be a great tree into the yellow truck.

These guys moved really fast.. this was the view of our patio after a little more than an hour. And when they were done they cleaned all the little twigs and bits up to the point that it looked like nothing had happened.

Until you looked up and saw the carcass of our tent, that is..

The rain cleared for awhile, and we decided to take advantage of that and take care of the tent once and for all

A couple friends and a neighbor came over to help us pick through the debris, bring the stuff that was still good into the garage, and throw what was destroyed into the back of our truck to take to the dump.

One of the things that didn't survive was the treadmill. And this was the year we were totally going to start using it again!

It rained on and off, which possibly sped things up, because we got through everything pretty fast. Then came the very satisfying tearing apart the tent itself.. we tried to use power tools on it, but the thing was so trashed it pretty much just fell into pieces.

side note: no worries about me lifting anything heavy.. I had 6 people yell at me if I so much as touched a bin, so I mostly just directed what should go where and refreshed the trash bags.

This is all that was left of the tree at the end of the day.. we saved a couple stumps to use as stools - I hope the cool red veining doesn't fade! - and scattered some chips down on the muddy side yard.

We have more daylight than ever in the back yard, which is nice enough now in the dead of winter, but it's going to be a drag in the middle of the day during the summer when there's no shade around.

We're really going to miss the tree, it wasn't even on our property but it was definitely part of the house.

about that tree we wanted in our yard,,

.. this is not what we had in mind. You could also file this under "just when you thought you had more than enough to deal with."

At 2:30 this morning I woke up to a very strange sound. It was loud and long and sort of whooshing.. It was a windy night, but that was definitely something more than just wind.

I jumped out of bed to see what it was and all I saw out the back window was tree. Which is unusual, mind you, because we don't have ANY trees on our property. So I moved into the kitchen and opened the back door and, sure enough, all tree.

I'm going to back up a few days here to when a big branch/limb broke off in our neighbor's yard. He was very worried about the health of the tree and thought it probably needed to be removed or it might fall. We agreed to call an arborist out to take a look.. It was a giant tree, that was very pretty in its day, but had been getting worse. The arborist came out on Friday and identified a few problems with the tree and determined it likely could not be saved.

About 3 years ago the neighbor behind us cut off a very big branch, which had a sore leading from it causing a lot of decay. It also appeared that a lot of the root structure had been removed from the same side to make room for the foundation of a garage being built. These were a couple of big contributing factors to the ill health of the tree

Many years prior to that, there was a fencepost that the seemed to be growing around. That may also have contributed to the problem.

This tree had been in the front of our minds all week, so when I looked out the window it was a very sad end to the issue. And the start of another..

We ran outside to make sure our neighbor was ok, and he was out there calling for us for the same reason. The fence between our houses was obliterated, but neither house seemed to have any damage.

There was one big branch still hanging off our neighbor's house and we were all worried that with the wind the tree might shift and the house might not get off so easy the second time

Out came the super-handy cordless sawzall, and the branch came right off the tree

The branch was still hanging off the house though, so Dan went offroading in his robe to get it down.

By this time the rain had started pouring down, and there was clearly nothing else that could be done, so we all went off to bed. Not that there was much sleep with everyone worrying about what damage there was, and how we were going to get the tree out of there..

This morning, it turned out not to have been a dream.

<-- This is the view from our upstairs window. It was a very big tree, and the whole thing is now in our backyard.

The tree is so big I couldn't get all of it in one picture, even from that high up! It stopped a foot or so short of the fence on the other side of the yard..

This is from the corner of the patio nearest the house. The tree miraculously didn't take down the back porch/stairs.. we can't use the stairs at the moment, because they're a land mine of branches, but we're pretty happy it's all still standing.

The weight of the tree seems to be on these branches at the bottom of our patio, and the way they snap off very easily, we're not walking underneath it at all.

<-- This is the view from the back corner of the yard. The fence is just gone, and the whole tree is resting on its branches in our patio

Thank goodness I got the hole in the roof of the tent patched! ;)

This is the thing I'm trying not to think about.. we can't get to the tent at all, because the tree is a little precarious. Plus, it rained all night long, so any damage that's going to be done is already done.

Dan sent the arborist an email last night when we came inside, and he called back this morning and said he'd be right over (in the rain, on Sunday, wife and kids in the car.. )

This is the giant sore running along the back of the trunk. At the top right is the very improperly cut branch that led to the decay.

Behind the tree, through the convenient opening in the fence, you can see the garage that the tree died for. Not a scratch on it.

Zoomed in a bit, you can see the fencepost that the tree ate a long time ago..

And the spongy bottom where typically, roots would hold the tree upright in the ground.

It being a Sunday, and pouring rain, and tomorrow being a holiday, it's not looking good to get someone out here to haul the tree away. But it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and the tent and the fence aren't going to break any worse than the completely destroyed they are now, so there's not much point in stressing about it sitting where it is. Besides, we're going to miss the tree, so another day or two with it is fine with us.