tree talk

I’ve mentioned our rather large tree on here before, but I don’t believe I’ve shown pictures. So tonight, we’re going to talk trees….and my hatred for certain people that work with our city.

At the end of July, while we were out of town, limbs started falling off of a tree in our back yard. Very large limbs. It took two people to carry these to the street:

I called a tree guy the first week of August, and they came by to assess the situation.

First, they were very impressed. Black Oak trees don’t generally thrive in our area, much less in a residential area. And we have two black oak trees. And they’re very healthy.

Second, we had some dead limbs. As the tree grows taller, the lower limbs die off. We’d had so much rain that the dead limbs were becoming very saturated and falling. Hard. And leaving holes in the ground.

Third, it was going to cost $420 to have the tree trimmed, and an extra $100 for the limbs to be removed.

So we got a second opinion, and they said all of the above, except they charged over $550 to trim it.

Earlier this month, I called the first guy back and set up a time to have them come out to do the job. Later that day, I came home to more limbs that had fallen. I joked that if we delayed it any more, I wouldn’t have to pay them because the limbs would all be in the yard.

So two weeks ago, the guys came, trimmed the tree and piled everything neatly for me to deal with.

As the guys walked away, one told me, “It was a real honor to climb that tree today.” Weird.

Some workers with the city saw the guys and said they weren’t going to touch the limbs. That’s fine, they didn’t need to touch the large stuff – we had friends who wanted the large limbs for firewood.

I spent hours pulling the small stuff (limbs that had fallen on their own) to the curb. Hours. The city came by yesterday to pick up brush, and skipped our yard. You can only imagine the conversation I had with the guy this morning. Needless to say, they’re coming back in the next week to get everything they left.

And this is the current state of our tree:

I can only imagine how I’m going to feel after raking all of those leaves. And we have four rather large trees in our yard. Now might be the time to find a neighborhood kid to pay to rake.