A couple of weeks ago, our tree let us know that It Was Time.
It did so as I was strolling up the sidewalk, having just arrived home from work. I looked up at the tree and the one completely live limb of the tree, in slow motion, cracked away from the trunk. Struck with horror, I watched the branch fall toward our neighbor's house... and get caught by the one live limb of her nearly dead tree, which stopped the limb from falling on the Expensive Convertible parked beneath it (belonging to the boyfriend of our neighbor's tenant).
There was a panicked scramble, and we got a tree guy to come out and look at it. He informed us that even if it didn't stay up the night, it wouldn't hit the house. He then made us a fabulous deal for taking down both trees. The convertible was moved, and we waited until morning. They came out promptly at 8 am and felled both trees in less than six hours. They returned the next day for the large logs. Two days ago, he returned and ground out our stump, leaving us with an enormous pile of mulch.
It was an adventure, I suppose. The tree went as gently as it could, and we are grateful.
Now, the photos.
Taken through the front window on the second floor.
Our limb, caught by the neighbor's tree.
The red arrow indicates the only point of contact between the limbs. The only place that was holding up our branch.
Another angle on the back side of the tree. You can see where the branch 2 years ago split off.
What it looked like from the front.
The stump and the trunk.
Me, providing scale for the size of the trunk and stump. Expensive (and extremely fortunate) convertible in background.
The felled trunk from the other side, with some of the major branches. The car is not ours, but provides some lovely scale. The apartment building across the street remains ugly.
The hollow in the limb that fell, where we saw a squirrel living our first year living in HoRD, and where we subsequently saw a woodpecker. Notice the bizarre chunk of chicken wire that was inside this hollow! All we can figure is that someone tried to keep the squirrels out of it, and the squirrels found it a useful matrix on which to build their nests.
