Hints and Guesses

On the corner of our lot sits a large beech tree. Since we’ve owned this house, we’ve had four incidents in which large branches broke off the tree. The first was during a storm (two large branches came down that time), the second was a calm, sunny day (I happened to see that one fall), the third was in light wind conditions, and the fourth was during a big storm. The fourth incident took out a power line, and our neighborhood was without power for several hours. It also almost hit a passing minivan and would have hit the firstborn’s car if his brother hadn’t ditched it in order to take shelter in the house (he parked around the corner instead of the driveway, and that saved him).

I like trees, but I have never liked this tree. It leaned over the street in front of the house and I had visions of it crashing on top of a car or two. Taking it out, however, was out of our budget, and so branches continued to fall, miraculously never hitting either a person or a vehicle. Still, I called it the Death Tree.

Until the power company decided to take it out, after the last incident. They’ve been on a tear around town lately, taking out way more trees than I thought necessary. Today they finally got to ours.

Here’s a before sequence, starting from the base (note the power lines in the first photo, and note the lean, which is worse than it looks in this photo):

Here’s what’s left of the top:

And this is what’s left of a once-mighty tree:

Negotiations are under way for how we’ll design that area of the yard.