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Monday, June 13, 2011

The tree out front goes "Adios!"

Since we moved into our house four years ago we've taken special notice of the city-owned tree in front of our house. While much of it seemed healthy (certainly healthy enough to generate piles of leaves and clogged gutters every autumn) one large branch was visibly dead, and as the years wore on more and more of the trunk appeared diseased.

A few calls for removal went unheeded, but a few weeks ago a city worker drove by and just happened to notice the tree. He got out of his truck to talk to me, then put in an order for the tree to be cut down. The crew showed up the day we departed for LuLu's trip to Fort Atkinson.

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One guy went up in a cherry picker with a small chain saw. One by one he removed the large limbs of the tree, often lowering them to the ground with rope.

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Other crew members carried the debris to a portable chipper.

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Given Smiley's huge interest in botany and gardening, this was right up his alley and we sat outside and watched the proceedings until it started to rain. Lu joined us for a spell, but YaYa (claiming to mourn the tree) stayed in her room. The guy in the cherry picker waved to her when he was even with her window.

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Much of the tree is still standing. The rest will be removed another day, and the stump ground down. A replacement will be planted in the spring or fall of 2012.

1 comment:

Sybil said...

It is always a bit sad when a tree gets cut down but sometimes as in your case it clearly needed to be, It would have been awful if on eof the limbs had broken in a gale and fallen on someone...
Good to see they are going to replace it though..we need all the trees we can get. when I was in Singapore I was amazed at how much traffic there was and yet the air seemed relatively clean...somoen pointed out to me that it was because there were so many trees they obsorbe the pollution...and then I noticed just how many trees there were . every street seemed lined with them
Love to ALL sybil xx