Bye-Bye, Tree.

My computer just died.  Won't even power up.  All my computer-saved tree-ly good pictures of my fave tree are gone.  Ah, well, here's a random shot of it through my kitchen window.  It will have to do.  The tree started becoming hollow up under, bark began to fall off and branches were dying.  The whole tree was in the dying process for a while, but I'm sure the hot, drought-y weather did it no favours, either.  So it was time to go before it fell and did some major damage.

Not the sort of thing you just do yourself, though.  The tree is absolutely immense.  I could squat down and take a picture straight up even from this angle, and the tree will still be up up up there.  We had to hire the professionals at Prentice and Bush to come out and do the job.  Jason climbs up the tree like a spider with nothing but a rope and a pair of spiky cleats.  He takes a chainsaw and a drink along, but it's almost like watching Avatar to see him scurrying about so high up.

A view from my driveway.  The tree branches are halfway down in this picture.  This picture does not give the size of my tree justice.  The websites I've encountered say "mature" pin oak trees are 70 feet tall, and the ones I have left on the side of my house are about that, but this one was a bit taller and closer to 90 feet. (I am guessing that 70 feet is an average and not a world record.)   Oddly only the trees on the west side of my house remain.  Others got sick or were dying and had to be removed over the years.  They would probably have been planted in 1964 when the house was built.

The bad thing about having to have this work done is now I have an in-your-face view of 1960's power wires, complete with squirrel nest and some glass-looking doodads.  Sometimes the squirrels electrocute themselves to death because they keep running about on the wires, but that doesn't stop the stupid things from building the same old nests year after year.  Kind of like the let's build a condo on the Florida coast mentality.  Whenever they do this, we lose power for a while.

Speaking of losing power, most of our town was in total darkness overnight because of a very large and sudden thunderstorm.  The silence during the outage was just amazing.  You never realize how much electrical humming and other noise is about you until it is hushed.  Our area was one of the very last to be up and running power-wise, so sleepy children had to find ways to light their way in the morning and stay safe.  Jason had been telling me when he bid our job that really, things were slow, they could sure use the work, etc.  I'm so glad the tree came down just before the big storm hit.  Right now, all the local tree service people are going to be VERY busy for a while.  Just saw six tree trucks going up and down our street doing work today.  Meanwhile, my newly-trimmed trees have just been rained upon so it's perfect timing.