They Were Good Trees

On Friday, we cut down two perfectly healthy, magnificent Blue Spruce trees in our backyard.  We pushed this day off for almost a year, but it finally came.  Based on the previous owner's recollection, the twin Spruces were planted sometime in the early 1970's.  For some reason, they planted them directly in the middle of the yard.  From our deck, the view looked liked this.  We had no yard because of them.

They're both were perfectly healthy.  However, we needed to start clearing the yard for our garage.  For the past year, we've tried (probably more than we should have) to find a home for both of these trees.  First, we looked at Big Trees Inc - a company that specializes in finding mature trees and providing them to folks who want large trees immediately.  Big Trees Inc comes over, digs the whole tree out with the roots and all, scoops it on a truck and pays the tree "owner" a few bucks.  They then take that mature tree and sell it for thousands!  Sounds like their customers are units of government, developers, and quite frankly...rich people.  It is a really nice business because - instead of cutting down the tree - it lives on.

Unfortunately for us, they couldn't use the trees last fall and they didn't even come out to look at them.  From there, we went around to a few local towns asking if they wanted them for their town Christmas Tree.  Again...no takers.  Elmhurst puts up a big fake tree.  Finally, a few weeks ago, I begged Big Trees Inc to take the trees.  After going back and forth on the phone with them, the owner asked me to measure the diameter.  Any of you kids taking Geometry class now know that the way to measure diameter is what?.......Say it with me:  "Circumference divided by Pi".  The biggest circumference measurement from a tree that they can "successfully" take out is less than 12".  I got underneath these babies and discovered that the circumferences were in the 18"-24" range.  Too big for transplanting.

There was no way around it: they had to come down.  We were faced with that sad reality.  Two healthy, perfect trees were to be chopped down.  Progress is supposed to feel good, isn't it?  For Nat and I, we both felt sick.

It felt very fitting that their last few days included rain and sun on the same days.  We originally had them scheduled to be cut down early in the week on Monday, but I caved and called the tree service to tell them that we were "busy" and they had to come back Friday.  I really just couldn't muster up the courage to cut them down.  I wanted a few more days to chew on it.

Early Friday morning, the tree service showed up.  In quick work, they eliminated both of the trees from our yard.  We'll walk through that process tomorrow.  It was a sad day, indeed.