Two Big Trees

Last week on a misty morning, I heard the noise of chain saws and heavy equipment coming from the back of a neighbor’s house. By the time I got out on my deck to look, one of the uppermost branches had be cut off and was being lowered to the ground. It was a very tall tulip poplar that was at the edge of the forest and evidently had moved around a lot during the last wind storm – enough to cause the homeowner to decide it need to come down before it fell on the house.

I went upstairs to my office to get a better vantage point. Yes – there is a reflection that gets in the right side of the images…but I decided to document the process from my office. The crew had a truck with a tall boom. A person was on the controls for the truck and a person was up in the tree….and another man went up to attach ropes to the next branch to be cut so that it could be lowered slowly to the ground.

Another big branch – being lowered to the ground.

And the person going up to attach the rope to the next branch (he looked like he enjoyed the job!).

The branch comes down. Notice the rope that is holding it up…and will allow for it to be gently lowered to the pile.

And now the big trunk begins to come down. Note that the tree is not hollow or rotten. Tulip poplars are notorious for toppling in strong winds…and evidently they don’t have to be sickly for it to happen.

And then I realized that they were cutting down two trees instead of one. Here is the last cut to take the second tree down and

The big trunk being gently lifted to added to the pile.

Then it was all about clean up. It took about 7 hours of work for the crew to get the 2 trees down (and one branch that was rotting from another tree) and everything cleaned up.

I felt depressed that two trees at the edge of our forest were gone…but no one wants a tree to fall on their house.