Cutting Trees

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This is not about Christmas trees, but getting rid of two trees that outstayed their welcome. When we moved here eight years ago, I liked having the two Bradford pear trees bursting with white blooms in Spring and parading colorful leaves in Autumn. They lost a bit of appeal when a large limb fell toward the house. Neighbor Jeff and his wife cleaned up the mess, donating the burnable wood to a relative. John painted the wound on the tree, and life went on. A few years passed, and I read that Bradford pears were no longer welcome. They were brought here in the 1960s and became popular with developers and home-owners. It seems they are invasive, the seeds being spread by birds, and are pushing out native trees. A few states are going to ban their sale in the next year or so. Ours kept on growing. It was easy to see that they could easily fall on the house. Their days were numbered.

I had an appointment and didn’t get home until after the first tree was felled and removed. This photo shows the tree man getting ready to cut the second one.

David and I enjoyed watching the men feed the branches into a machine to make wood chips. Then they cut the trunk in pieces and threw them in the back of the truck. I was impressed with their cleanup. They raked all the twigs, putting them in the truck, and blew the sawdust to disperse it.

Now the house is clearly visible from the street.

I was stunned at the view from my front door this morning. Without the trees, I could see the house across the street and the mountains behind. An older photo shows how limited the view had been. Grandson David and I have discussed planting new trees, ones that wouldn’t grow as large. I’m happy to wait a while until we have narrowed the list.

Before and after photographs:

Published by Anne Mehrling

I'm a retiree who loves to write about life in the mountains of North Carolina.

Published

39 thoughts on “Cutting Trees”

  5. Good decision, those Bradford pears are notoriously weak trees too, splitting easily as you already found out. You might consider some pretty shrubs, like forsythia that would give you beautiful yellow flowers in the spring, and pretty red leaves in the fall.

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  6. Gosh ! We both have a new and gorgeous view don’t we !! I hated it when Bob cut Our Bradford tree in the front yard down too. When we bought and planted them, we had no idea that they become weaker as they grow. Also, a huge plus was I no longer smell their noxious odor in the Spring anymore !😛

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  7. We have a Bradford (or one of it’s cousins) in front of our house. We had tree work done this past year and they recommended taking it down. I couldn’t. It’s strategically placed to give us shade in the front. They thinned it to give me extra time to think. Pennsylvania is banning them (and all their cousins). You can’t sell them in 2023. They are pretty trees but are susceptible to storm damage too.

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    1. I was very aware of storm damage to Bradford pears, although the big piece that fell in our yard was a low -wind day. I’m going to miss the shade in summer. That’s what made our porch somewhat bearable in the afternoon. I hope your tree behaves itself.

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  9. I hate to see trees cut down, but sometimes it is time for them to go. You do have a better view now. You will miss the shade in the summer but that’s what umbrellas are for!

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  11. Wow, I learned a lot. One good thing is that your tree men were very professional, that is always a plus. You have a great view and i had no idea that trees could be banned. We may put in an apple tree or some fruit tree next spring, so it is good to know that we should be sure that the trees are “legal” Who Knew? Advent blessings, Michele

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  12. I was nodding my head as you wrote about the Bradford Pear trees and how they split and cause damage. A nearby city is removing all their Bradford Pears for that very reason. Next-door neighbor Marge and her husband moved next door in 1992. Shortly after moving here they were outside planting Bradford Pear trees. I can still picture it. They grew quickly and the same windstorm that caused my shed to go airborne and tumble across the lawn and break apart, caused one of her trees to crack and fall across the street. A 39 mph wind. Not even as bad as we’ll have tonight while I am sleeping. But yes, it did not damage anything when it fell and she had the other one taken down. Now, after the downed power line that happened due to a fallen tree branch from a newly dead tree, I’ll worry about every high-wind event going forward.

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      1. Oh, you were lucky. Actually, they were taking down the second pear tree and the tree cutter wasn’t paying attention and it fell onto my pole light and broke the address sign which had been in place, on the pole, since the early 70s. It was small and the house is small and I could not find another one the same size … I now have a larger sign, which is just a plastic sign, where the other one was a heavy metal. There was an issue because it was the City’s tree-cutting company. I wrote to them and e-mailed them for two months to get the sign replaced and finally the owner dropped off a check for $75.00 after I showed them a comparable sign. He called me and said he was dropping off the check in my mailbox as he was heading up north for the MLK holiday. So he did that and the next morning, probably 12 hours later, he was on a snowmobile, hit a stump, flipped over and died. Guess it is good I got it taken care of … but still. I have the oddest things that happen in conjunction with the house.

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          1. Yes, it was odd and my friend Ann Marie, the year before, met this guy because her young African Grey Parrot slipped its tether and flew out of their apartment up high into a tree. It was Spring, March or April and it would not come down. So they called around for tree cutters and found EJ’s Tree Service … Ann Marie lives five miles from me – the tree cutter came the next morning before he went on any jobs and went up in the cherry picker and rescued Digger. After he was killed, on the morning of the funeral, I was walking and saw a helicopter or a plane with a message about Eric Parrish and I knew this was the guy I heard about on the news and read in the local newspaper. I just looked for my post I wrote and it must have taken me a year to get that $75.00 check for the replacement sign according to my post. I looked for his widow on Facebook and sent the blog post to her because of the bird story (thought she might like to know this nice deed) and she posted it and once of his crew guys posted several comments about Eric and the post. I do have odd stories sometimes.

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              1. Yes, she was nice about it. Made me feel old as she wrote “a lady wrote a nice post about Eric – here it is.” He was only 43 and she was the same age and they had two teenage girls, but, like you said in your post when John passed away, that every day when John drove to New York, you worried for the crazy traffic and would he return home safely. I have to figure that Kristal worried every day when he left for work if he’d come home safe and sound. We had two large Oak trees cut down as they had carpenter ants. The tree cutters were very nice and the owner told my mom that every time he went up in the tree he made the sign of the cross as he had taken a bad tumble from a high tree and broke many bones and was laid up a very long time. Eric was a hero to Ann Marie and Steven (her husband) as that bird wasn’t that old that they could coax it down. They had their prior Amazon Grey and had a kitchen fire when her husband was taking bread out of the oven and it slid off the rack and caught on fire. That bird was 25 years old and the choke asphyxiated it and they lost it, so got this bird shortly thereafter.

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  14. We’ve had trees taken down too in the last few years, one, like yours had become junky in looks and nature, bumping into, and bending a neighbor’s fence as it went from smallish to large in the years we have lived here. The other, a massive oak tree was beloved by us, holding a swing for grandchildren, many squirrels and birds, but it became diseased and was at the end of its life. I love the view you have and was happy to see such a pretty portrait of your home.

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  15. Lovely new view for you Anne! We benefitted from a tree chipper this past week! We spent Saturday and part of Sunday moving wood chips from the front lawn to the garden before the blizzard arrived.

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      1. We were fine here in town, but we didn’t go anywhere until the snow stopped. 350 miles of interstate was closed most of the week though, so everyone was glad when the trucks finally got through from Denver to restock the grocery stores. The wind was a steady 35-50 mph until Friday morning, so east of town was crazy. One of my families spent 3 days digging their car out of a drift!

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